my life as a artist
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he art
Sunday 28th September 2008 10:02 PM
One night last week, after an alert phone-call alert from my Mum, I watched a channel 4 programme called 'The curse of the Mona Lisa', a lamentation on the shallow commercialism of art, presented by Robert Hughes, a justifiably and splendidly grumpy old man. As an embodiment of all that is vacuous and venal in the art-world, Demon Hurts was a perfect specimen for dissection, and as I enjoyed the viscera, it occurred to me that the art of Demon Hurts is truly tawdry.
The founding saint of Ely cathedral was St. Etheldreda, popularly known as St Audrey, (with three sisters called Ethelburga, Withburga and Sexburga, (which sounds like the complete nutrition for a Sun-reader) and a dad called Anna, she was probably delighted), and the shoddiness of the cheap lace tat and goods, for sale on her feast day, became known as 'St Audrey', or 'tawdry.
I found the double parentheses in the previous paragraph quite tortuous, and this morning the Corinthians lost 8-0 to the Shoulder of Mutton, so I'm going to accept the horizontal. More soon. Night!
Posted 10:02 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
small change
Thursday 18th September 2008 1:40 AM
The enormous black hole created during last week's trial run of the Large Ron-once-had-one Collider doesn't seem to have done too much damage, as far as I can tell. Myself, my Mum, fabulous Betty,Greg-with-the-power-bob, who-used-to-work-at-the-post-office, and others too imaginary to mention, have always believed that when matter is swallowed up by a black hole, rather than being annihilated, it goes into another dimension, and it does it so quickly and smoothly, that except for a slight tingle around the pineal gland and a few wobbly ornaments, most people don't even notice.
Since the transition, last Wednesday, I've been surveying the universe, and all her mirroraculous ways, and despite constant scrutiny and a perpetual, punishing regime of meditation and self-analysis, the only obvious difference I can see between this dimension and the last one, is that England are much better at playing football.
In all other respects, things carry on as normal, only more so. Huddersfield Town continue to lose, and the sagging, knitted swimwear of capitalism unravels even more, now revealing shocking nipples of truth. Despite the near-nakedness of our page three stunna emperor, Man City pay Robinho 160 grand for a deflected goal and two misplaced passes, while Demon Hurts successfully sells his latest collection, 'Bag o' Shite', at Sotheby's, for over £100,000,000. That's a lot of nothings, and someone's been messing with the decimal point.
Posted 1:40 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink
lots of van dycks but none by dick
Monday 8th September 2008 11:27 PM
On Friday night I attended the private view of the 'Artexny' exhibition at Castle Howard, in aid of York against Cancer (I think Cancer won 3-1). 'Artexny', in this case, is not the art of painting textured ceilings, but is an ungainly, hybrid lump of a word meaning 'art exhibition North Yorkshire'. It was a fizzy tie and black champagne do, involving thir(s)ty artists and a couple of hundred we-are-worthies, who were ferried from the car-park to the tradesman's entrance in a big, tractor-drawn toy train, made of hardboard and bunting, decorated with domed silhouettes in pleasant shades of cream and wedgwood blue. I'm glad to say that the train ride, though slow and vaguely humiliating, was completely free of charge.
Castle Hogwart, when it was built, was the largest private dwelling in England, and is one of the finest you-call-that-living examples of eighteenth century bling. Every room is crammed to bursting with busts, urns and cherubs, the walls filled, frame to frame, with old masters of Venetian landscapes and three-chinned kings. It was like having seven Sunday dinners in a row.
However, in a dark corridor, on the long labyrinthine journey to the toilet, I came across a fourth century Greek bust of Dionysius, huge, stoned and dreadlocked. Earthy, exuberant, sensuous and inscrutable, his eyes were rolled heavenwards, either in apprehension of the ecstatic vision, or in Frankie Howard-style dismay at all the surrounding Apollonic knick-knacks of polite society.
In my 'you-can't-tell-it's-from-a-car-boot-sale but-I'll-probably-tell-you-anyway' cream linen suit, amongst the penguin tide of black suits, I felt singular and creamy. The finger buffet consisted of weird canapés and those miniature sandwiches with the crusts cut off, so one doesn't have to do much chewing. The champagne ran out too early, and they didn't have any Guinness, so I larged it on elderflower cordial.
Seeing two women looking at and discussing my work, I informed them that I was the artist. One of them looked at me in surprise, and said, 'Oh, I thought they were done by a child.'
'Thanks' I said, expertly flicking a stilton mousse canapé into her handbag, 'Picasso said he was in his eighties before he learnt to paint like a child'.
Posted 11:27 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink
eight thirteen twenty one
Friday 29th August 2008 9:01 PM
One, two, three, five. It sounds like the punch-line of a drummer joke, but is in fact, part of the Fibonacci series, a mathematical sequence wherein every number is the sum of the preceding two numbers. The series determines the spirals of sunflowers, snails and pine-cones and also leads us to the golden ratio, with which, if we've got time and some sticky-backed paper, we can build a golden rectangle.
Pythagoras used to build golden rectangles out of hippopotamus hide and massive bits of stone, and used the series to determine the cement to sand ratio in the mortar. Centuries later, Leonardo Da Vinci took the remains of those mysterious rectangles, and using the irrationality of the golden ratio, made them into a helicopter. The series is so immersed in function and beauty that it's no surprise to me that 1-2-3-5 is the only true and right formation for a football team to adopt. I think the England team should look like this.
James
Richards A.Cole
Gerrard Mum Barry
Bentley Rooney Owen Me Young
Yes, Fabio Capello! I urge you to spurn the boiling madness of religious fundamentalism (4-4-2), reject the cold stupidity of crass materialism (4-5-1), and instead seek enduring truth and equanimity in the sacred rhythms of the natural world (2-3-5).
In this satisfyingly pyramidal England line up, I've given my Mum the nod over Rio Ferdinand and preferred myself to Frank Lampard, but I would stress to Fabio that it's the formation, not the personnel, that's most important here. Having said that, even though it's a big ask, if picked, I think me and my Mum could do big jobs. She's got bags of biscuits, and with my punning skills, I think I could open up Andorra's box.
Posted 9:01 PM | 6 Comments | Permalink
i ran em all
Monday 18th August 2008 10:53 PM
Although I think drug-use in sport is generally deplorable, this weekend I was delighted to see the Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, take time out from the 100 metres final at the Olympics, to roll himself a small joint during the last twenty metres. Although technically illegal, I saw it as an injection of rare humanity into the increasingly boring buttocks of the Olympian beast-machine, and anyway, in my opinion, the laws on marijuana should be relaxed, and if it's decent stuff, really relaxed.
Meanwhile, in his hermetically sealed, space-age, one-piece swimsuit, Michael Phelps roars like a muscle-filled, fibre-glass walrus, the inevitability of his victory a fact as inescapable as one of his farts. There's a dramatic conflict going on here, between the flatulence produced by his diet, and the swimsuits reluctance to allow it egress, that I'm hoping to explore in my latest film, called 'Escape to Victory', starring Michael Caine as stomach acid and Sylvester Stallone as a twenty-five egg omelette.
The real story of the week for me was Alf Tupper's sensational gold medal win in the 1500 metres. Alf's been funding his Olympic stay by working nights at a local engineering company, as a welder, and on the way to the stadium he fell asleep on the Beijing underground and missed his stop. He had to run half a mile to the stadium, stopping only to eat double fish and chips, and by the time he got there the race had already started. Having no time to change, he joined the race in his heavy, hob-nailed working boots, and despite the class-prejudiced taunts of Lord Coe and his pals, won the race in a world record time.
Alf Tupper, a nineteen year-old welder, lives with his Aunt Meg in Greystone, and because the house is one-up-one-down, sleeps on a mattress on the kitchen floor. Out of his weekly wage of twenty-five shillings he gives her twenty-two and six and keeps half-a-crown for himself. Meanwhile, Frank Lampard earns two million, eight hundred thousand shillings a week and probably has his own bedroom as well. Bloomin' toffs!
Posted 10:53 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
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