A poem that was recently brought to my attention…

Muséé des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

My pictures totally lack tension. Tension is the key to the kind of pictures I want to make.

Neu Rauch has the kind of tension I would love to have, that sense of expectancy

Bacon has tension, its the balancing of forms which are on the verge of implosion and collapse.

Matthias Weischer has architectural tension, I tihnk this is a product of the synthetic and artificial nature of his creation of illusionisitc space. It reads as real but seems fragile and on the verge of falling back apart, of decomposing

Titian has tension, Shakespearian tension. It is a multiple tension which functions on so many formal and iconographic levels to the point of being a complex but eloqunet expression of the entire tension of episodes of the human consciousness.

Rothko has tension, colourisitc and spatial mianly, but one which leads to an emotive and traigc frame of reference. Read the rest of this entry »

Deleuze- Francis Bacon painting- Couples and Triptychs- chapter 9

Between the abstract and the narrative is something else; the indechiperable moment.  

For Bacon that moment is often the meeting of forces, forces which are occupied within two bodies. A dialogue which resonates is born. A tension is created. This is the coupling of sensations in Deleuze’s words. For that is what he think Bacon paints, the sensation as form, not the form.

The couples create a dilemma. What about the sense of violent isolation Bacons solitary, single figures have. That is no lost. The co prescence, the company of another, seems tospeak of seperation, and thus a heightened sense of isolation is born. An isolation through the connection absent in the combined prescence. Read the rest of this entry »

A window points to depth

A wall reflects and absorbs flatness

All thats in the frame passes before being reached

 All ascribed to the crumbling surface is soaked up in a dry mouth

Idealism has depth

Realism has flatness

The place is flat

The Journey has depth

Love is depth and desire it flatness Read the rest of this entry »

Tragedy is not singular. Each artform has its own form of tragedy, as does life itself. Lifes tragedy is obvious, the inevitability of death as a consequence of birth.

Narrative, literary, tragedy is the closest to this. Moving through time and space it necessitates plot. The tragedy in narrative is always tied up in cause and effect. What will happen is an inevitable consequence of what is happening, the end is defined by the start.

Photographic tragedy is different. The photograph is about a moment in reality which had been. Its static nature only focus our attention on the inevitable death of the moment recorded. It is not held in eternity but killed and embalmed. Photography is never about idealism but the depressing realism, the shadow of reality. Its oppositions are tragic reminders of lifes tragic transcience. Read the rest of this entry »

Everything divides into opposites

It all decomposes into mapable coordinates

Composed artificially for need of idealism

These constructs are ascribed to our particular psyche

The imprint of a repetitive history

Never intrinsic but forcing its way beneath the skin

The vertical is male Read the rest of this entry »

Cy Twombly, Bacchus: Tate Modern Retrospective

The Bacchus series were the most recently of the works shown at the Cy Twombly, Tate Modern Retrospective. Made in 2005 they are some of the most vibrant paintings made by Tyombly.

What initially grabs you is the sheer vibrancy of colour. Ther Veridian literally glows, filling the room with a luminous red haze. It is no pun to say you feel drunk from the sheer impact of colour on the retina.

The paintings seem to be about the duel properties of wine. The loops taske us up. The luminous red lifts us. We are pulled to the top of the frame. Then the loops descend, the drips pull us down, the red becomes too much; too intoxicating. We feel nauseuous adn the lightness becomes a cloying heaviness.

The sheer power of colour in Cy Twombly’s, Bacchus paintings is remarkable. The Tate Modern Retrospective is well worth a vist.

Deleuze on Bacon- chapter eight, painting forces.

 We are told paintings task is not to ‘render the visable but to render visable’. Thus we upon up the timeless apology to the attack on painting as a form of representation. It provides a neat repost to critics from Plato to Greenberg.  We are denying painting as merely a mirror to the world or a narricistic reflection of itself. Instead we are arguing that it is a doorway beaneath the surface appearance of things, so giving us a glimpse of known but unseen aspects of reality.

 It all sounds rather mystical, or conveniant at best. I think I am naturally cycnical to this apology. It seems to easy to give painting this magical power to give concrete form to otherwise elusive and unseen being. We are not dreamcatchers. Surely paintings always talk of surface appearances, be they those of paint itself or out shadow image of the tangible world.

Luckily Deleuze tackles the issue with the rigour of a scientist, leaving me slightly more convinced that painting can and does reach beyond the surface.

Deleuze talks of the visulisation Bacon gives to otherwise invisable forces. Bacon is not so much concerned with the figure, but the forces which underly and effect the figure. The figure is seemingly a vessel which allows him to articulate and excavate these forces.

These ellusive forces are identified. Chief among them seems to be the non audible force of time. Below this a list of elementary forces is listed: inertia, gravitation, attraction, weight and pressure. Physical identifable forces which speak of the cause or effect of a force upon a form. Thus the form needs to exist in order to articulate the force which acts upon it. Sound is also mentioned, with particular reference made to Bacon’s fascination with the scream.

An early opposition with Deleuze approach comes with his dismissal of subject matter. The specific nature of the form seems to be deemed unimportant to him. He argues that it is the force from, within or upon the form which matters. This seems blinkered. The complex web like map of a painting renders each part important. To often writters compartmentalise a painting in order to find a more complete and unified outcome from their deconstruction. Deleuze does not totally dismiss subject matter but in his discussion of Millet he certainly relegates it in his clear hierachy. I am not arguing that any one writter should try and take on every aspect of a work. Too much is at stake with any one aspect to render this possible. It is thus only natural that someone should take on style, another subject matter or iconography, another social context and another a search for metaphysical values. But it is the consistent pig headed nature of each writter to aggrandise their own search over another which drives me mad. I have digressed, but I think the criticism is necessary if not overly dogmatic.

Deleuze’s argument, therefore, is that a painter does not paint the object but is actually trying to capture the particular force of, on, from or within that object. That force is the root of a particular sensation, and sensation is the chief aim of painting.  

 We briefly touch upon the root to finding and then capturing such forces. This allows us to see that it is not through some magical alchemy, but the product of formal fasciantions. We arrive at the force through the ‘decomposition and recomposotion’ of certain binary opositions. Historical references are given to the play between flatness and depth through the renaissance, the discussion between movement in Cubism and the deconstruction and recontruction of colour in Impressionism.

Movement seems to be the chief concern of Bacon in this respect, and his debt to Cubism is certainly apparent if not clear. For Bacon the cause of the force and the multitude of effects related to the force is what he is after. The form, normally a figure, is merely a vehicle to allow us to find this force. The normal relationship between form and force is subverted. The form no longer is the chief actor, rather it is relagated to the stage itself, with the forces taking the lead role.

 Thus Bacon tends to take immboliel forms which seem to be subjected to unknown, unseen outside forces. We don’t normally see the cause of the force but the force itself, its effect or impact. The flattening, the stretching, the scrubbing, the disturbing. This patches are not about disturbing and destroying the vision of the form below but discovering and revealing the force itself.

Deleuze calls the area of impact and disruption ’the zone of indiscernability’. I love this phrase but think that in some ways he is actually talking about the zone of discernability. For whislt the form below has been deformed the force has been given form.

This area must remain a zone and not spread like a disease over the whole body, causing total deformation. If this happens than the dialogue between form and force is lost. Once the form is lost then then so is the force, for we are only aware of its particular nature due to its specific impact on the form. Localised deformation of the stage is essential but without the stage the performance cannot exist. (A can feel this analogy stretching to the point of breaking.)

More specifically Bacon search for forces like the scream. The arrognat painter trying to make visable the audible? REgardless, Deleuze eloquantly describes how Bacon searches for the scream not the horror. The mere physical mechanics which cause a scream are irrelevant, they are just the ’spectacle’. It is the forces which make us scream, the unseen convulsion that Bacon searches for. Having not fully got my little head around this it seems like a potential contradiction.

Far clearer is the way Bacon deals with forces such as isolation, deformation and dissipation. All of which are empirically listed by Deleuze. He states that, ‘Bacon likens himself to a pulveriser… he is more like a detective.’ This reminds me of Andy’s assesment of Rothko. What is clear is that often, when dealing with high sensation, the painter must actually be detached, a cool calm customer, not lost in some hedonisitc and self aggrandising lust.

Deleuze finally deals with the force which seems to be the chief ambition of not just Bacon but most painters; time. He talks of two types of time in Bacon. The chanigng time which is articulated at many points in the deforming passages of paint which articulate movement within or on a form. Then the search for eternal time.

This time is our chief and unreachable goal. It is an invisable and undescribable force which is never made concrete in any form. It is not just the pursuit of the visual arts. I would argue that we are infact kidding ourseleves. Painting deals with vision, with what can actually be seen. It cannot make visable this aspect of time. It can, however, attempt to get us to a slightly closer vantage point. From there we feel like we can reach out without touching. The frustration of our attempts is actually what is made visable.

Other entries:

Chapter Seven- hysteria

Chapter Six- painting and sensation

Chapter Four

Chapter Three

Chapter two- study of a dog 1952

Andy’s thoughts - and more thoughts

Francis Bacon- Deleuze chapter 7, Hysteria.  

 Its ‘hysteria’. It’s a ‘galloping schizophrenia’. This, according to Deleuze, is a unique property of painting, particuarly Bacon’s painting. What exactly does he mean by this?

He talks of the ‘body without organs’, which sounds wonderfully greusome but is more than a mere lump of blood drenched skin withered on the floor. To understand the body without organs we need to appreciate what is meant by the body with organs.

It seems the Deleuze sees the individual as one which is trapped by the limits of its forms, or at the least our vision of the body is trapped. The organs are specific forms in specific places, there predetermined organisation is the organism. The organism is our system, it defines, limits and controls our physical prescence. Deleuze beleives we are more than this. Thus the painters job is to reach beyond a mere description of the container and its compartmentalised existence.

For Deleuze we do not just paint the visable prescence but make visable the entire prescence, including sensation which reaches beyond these previously described limits. For him painting has this ability. The colour which breaks from naturalism, the line which needlessly reaches further, the mark which abstracts; all these are factors which begin to offer avenues of escape. For him the body can be realsied by painting from the physcial constraints of concrete, measurable values. Painting is more elastic than tangible reality. The sensation searched for cannot be so empirically measured or recorded.  For Deleuze painting shoudl reach further. Beyond the limits of the flesh and towards a more direct root to the nervous system.

This is not a case of reaching for abstraction. For that journey sees us go to far, to the point where we have become subordinate to a new limiting vision. We are back to being restricted by the body and the organism, but this time the organism is one of painting not a human prescence. It is limiting all the same. Abstraction is not a total escape but a new entrapment.  It is merely another submission.

There is no point looking for the point of total escape, for painting cannot find it. The expression of pure sensation is a gift saved for music. Painting is always locked to the body and when it breaks total free it is merely locked to another body.

What is unique about painting is the frustration. It is always locked to an organism but never totally comfortable in its system nor capable of being set toally free. Rather than lament this limbo painting needs to attempt to articulate the desire, but preordanied failure, to escape. What painting talks of is that failed desire to be set free, the moment of flux, the point at which we reach for sensation but remain attached to flesh. We remain locked at the point of escape, rooted to the material reliaty whilst looking to break beyon dit. Painting is, as such, intrinsically tragic.

 This tragedy is what I think Deleuze is talking about when he uses the word hysteria in regards to Francis Bacon’s work. However inescapable it is we still attempt to break from it. The desire for a point of inevitable failure is surely a resonating frustration which can be lablled as hysteria.

Other entries:

Chapter Eight

Chapter Six- painting and sensation

Chapter Four

Chapter Three

Chapter two- study of a dog 1952

Andy’s thoughts - and more thoughts

The photographer is far more democratic in his approach than the painter. By its nature his practise allows him to point and click with less consideration over the minutie of his creation. He considers tone, composition, scale and all the other equivalent formal elements that a painter concerns himself with. The difference is that his is a selective process, not an onnipotent one. Whilst he frames he chosen material other detritus are free to present themselves in any way that the occasion and time and space allow. The painter, however, tends to select every element of his imagery.

This results in passages of genuine naturalness in a photograph. We may frame a beach scene to capture the sunset and the image of two children playing bat and ball. In the left hand corner, however, we may accidentally have happened upon the edge of a man walking a dog half way through leaving the scene.

 Its the kind of dramatic positioning which has begun to filter into painterly image making through the influence of photography. These chance moments can now be lifted, directly or indirectly, from photographic discovery to painterly construction.

 It seems, Andy, that your continued fascination with the wandering dogs and man walking dogs is a direct result of such chance glances. I remember you chowed me a while ago a photograph you found that had someone walking a dog half cropped at its edge. i commented at the time how its the kind of framing a painter would never choose; not without the infleucne of phtogoraphy.

This seems to put painting, in this instance, in a subordinate role to photography in some visual hierachy. The reality is that in its borrowing painting transforms that moment.

The cut of figure almost dissovles into nothingness in a phtograph. The viewer is aware that it is an unconsider extra, an accident of the process. Their deconstruction of the pictorial dynamics remains attached to the central figures of the image.

The viewer of the painting cannot so easily show such selective vision. The moment we look at a painitng we are aware, or believe, that we are looking at something whose every motif has been selected. The cut of man walking the dog, therefore, can no longer be dismissed. Instead he must take on some anrrative, dramatic or visual role. He becomes an attendant figure, a supported, a protagonist perhaps. A figure leave the stage and opening up a potential dialogue with the rest of the image. He points to both a world outside of the frame and complkicates the selected world within.

When we conflate the visual referents of the photographic and painted worlds we always find that the collaberation of the two creates a shifted visual code which is perhaps not previously present in either.