Damien Hirst's Olympic Spin Painting

Now, despite its size, you may be forgiven for having actually missed the gi-normous Damien Hirst painting at the centre of the closing cermony for the Olympic Games.  

Here it is...

Yes, that's it there, that Union Jack red white and blue smudgy thing in the middle...

Images AP and Reuters

The work, lengthily entitled ‘Beautiful Union Jack Celebratory Patriotic Olympic Explosion in an Electric Storm Painting’ (2012), was described by the Olympic committee as epitomising, “the dynamic, anarchic energy of British Pop Art.”  Of course.

It's a huge version of one of his spin paintings, based on the retro children's toy you may have played with in your childhood.  Here's the man himself with one of his spin pictures.

Now, if you did ever make something at home with your Magic Spin Art in about 1972 that looked uncannily exactly like this, there are several give-away criteria that would easily distiguish your poor effort from that of Damien's masterpiece.

1.  it would have been less than 130 metres wide

2.  you would have been aged about 8, and 

3.  you would have actually made it yourself.

But I'm being peevish.

'Art is what you can get away with,' said Andy Warhol.  It's a philosophy embroidered on the seat of Damien Hirst's pants. 

But to be fair, what else could he have done for such a massively patriotic event but produce a humungously big, smudgy Union Jack?  And at least there was a bit of British art right there, at the heart of the Olympics.  Art was, of course, formerly part of the Olympics, with medals awarded for architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture from 1912-1952. 

However, you just wonder what an Olympic ceremony designed by a fantasy British art team might look like..... 

I'd have Roger Dean for the giant inflatables, Barbara Hepworth for some huge iconic abstract structures, giant Edouardo Paolozzi robots stomping about, dazzling Chris Ofili scenery; and then I'd throw in Paul Nash, Francis Bacon, Stanley Spencer, Peter Lanyon, Bridget Riley, all of the Bloomsbury Group....

Who would you pick...?

Art, Disability, and the Dignity of Risk

I'm sure you'll have seen Oscar Pistorius, the 'Blade Runer',  racing at the Olympics.

South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius competes in the 400-meter semifinals heat, Sunday, August 5, 2012. 

(AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Pistorius had his legs amputated as a baby, so fitting his prosthetic legs was as normal for him as putting on a pair of shoes.  His disability wasn't made an issue of by his parents.  With this mind-set, he never saw a problem about pursuing his natural athletic ability, and the sight of him running in the semi-final was both compelling and beautiful, with his sculptural, tip-toe form tearing down the track.

His biggest problem in getting to that stage at the Olympics was with the governing body of the IOC, who complained that his prosthetic legs gave him an advantage.  Obviously none of the IOC members had had their legs amputated, and had then attempted to run a race out of starting blocks balanced on pieces of narrow bent metal.  It's hardly an advantage.  However, eventually he was allowed to take part alongside everyone else. 

In fact he came last (not his fault in the relay), and in fact, instead of suspicion and complaints from fellow competitors, he won the utmost admiration and respect.  The winner, Kirani James of Grenada, didn’t rejoice in his own victory in the immediate aftermath but made straight for Pistorius, unpinning his racing number from the front of his vest and swapping it with him. It was a great moment.

Getty Images/Phil Walter

 

Getty Images/Alex Livesey

Pistorius was making the point that he didn't want to make a point.  He was saying, "I want to take part just the same as everyone else - because I can run."  He wanted to be allowed to be equal, without concessions - the dignity of risk.

Read more in an article here.

Australian Priscilla Sutton is also an amputee.  For her, a prosthetic limb is also something normal, not something to hide or disguise, but a piece of body art.

 

She has curated a show 'Spare Parts' which opens next week in funky Brick Lane, London, where artists have been asked to decorate and transform prosthetic body parts.  

It came about when Priscilla found one of her old prosthetic legs in a cupboard, and found that she didn't know what to do with it - it's a hard thing to dispose of, and is something that is very personal and intimate.  The problem of what to do with it turned into the idea of something celebratory, and so the exhibition took shape.  

An art exhibition about fake body parts might not be everyone's cup of tea.  It's a bit 'edgy'.  A false leg can be something frightening or squeamish, and a prosthesis an object of apology or shame. You don't know, as a non-wearer, whether to look at it or not.  

But for the wearer, they can be transformed to become an extension of the self.  The exhibition is about taking something sculptural and personal, something normally hidden or disguised, and making them beautiful, something of acknowledgement and acceptance.

Here's Priscilla's 'going out' leg, complete with artwork by Mark Ryden.

Now, that's a party leg!  It's not hidden.  It's not trying to be the same as the other leg.  It's saying exactly what it is, but in a way that makes it a real part of the owner.

Oscar Pistorius's legs say - you know what, I'm fast.  I can run.  I'm able. I'm about speed and fitness.   Priscilla's leg speaks of her personality and youth, vibrancy and tenacity. 

Both people have had bad stuff happen to them - well, ok, but that's not the issue any more.  Now it's about what they can do, not what they can't.  Their disablities have thus become conduits for their creative energies and talent.  It's ok to look.

Spare Parts will be at The Rag Factory, Brick Lane, in London from 25 August to 9 September 2012.

Read more about the exhibition in the article here.

A History of Art in Three Colours: Blue

I was very much looking forward to this new BBC4 series, which explores how, in the hands of artists, the colours gold, blue and white have stirred our emotions, changed the way we behave and even altered the course of history.

I missed the first episode, which was 'Gold' - rather irritating as gold is a precious metal rather than a colour, so somewhat went against the premise of the title.

However, last night was 'Blue' 

It started with Dr James Fox bobbing about on the Venetian lagoon with a big lump of lapis lazuli, the exotic blue stone like a piece of the sky itself, that changed how art looked.  

Previously, blue didn't feature much in art or language.  Colours were made from earth pigments, so art was rather brown.  There was an interesting segment where Dr Fox watched a piece of lapis being made into pigment, and the huge effort and time (up to 2 weeks)  that goes into grinding the very hard stone and processing the colour.  Perhaps the most striking image of the whole programme was when he then held up a small bottle of the finished product, a mesmerising ultramarine - intense, bright, pure and strong.

Then is was off to Padua, to see the Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, one of the most important rooms in the whole of Western art, and a hymn to the colour blue.

Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (Fresco, 1305)

I've visited the chapel in the 80s, when you could just walk in off the street, and take as much time as you liked to look at the paintings, while the sun beat down outside and you could hear the sound of the swifts.  I revisited in 2004, having driven to Italy in my mini, and this time, you had to book in advance for a timed ticket.  The chapel has been restored, and is all climate controlled, so you have to wait in a sealed room before proceeding into the chapel for your allotted 15 minutes with the frescoes.  It doesn't make for relaxed viewing.

Giotto used lapis lazuli blue on the ceiling vault (and what a fortune that must have cost) to depict Heaven itself.  Thus you are standing up and looking right into another world, with the Virgin Mary, Jesus and saints.  The colour thus becomes emblematic of the divine.

Giotto, Vault of Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (Fresco, 1305)

Blue became the colour of Mary, and began to be controlled by the Church, who maintained its high price and coralled its use.  Two hundred year later, however, Titian defied the convention, and Dr Fox looked at the restored Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery in London.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne (Oil, 1520)

If you take a diagonal from top right to bottom left, half the painting is blue - costing a fortune to make.  It's not a biblical subject, and Ariadne is wearing the Virgin's colour of blue robes.  How exactly Titian got away with incurring the wrath of the church wasn't really explained.

Then it was on to Picasso, via a rather strange and unclear bit about Romantics and flowers.  In any programme about art history and the colour blue, you have to talk about Picasso and his Blue Period.  

"What was the event that triggered Picasso's Blue Period?" mused Dr Fox.  Well, it was the death of Picasso's friend Casagemus, wasn't it?  Woah, not so fast!

And this is what began to annoy me about the programme.  Dr Fox takes a very, very long time to make an obvious point, when a bit of judicious editing would make the whole programme more to the point and less about the presenter.  

And so we had the mean and moody monochromatic Dr Fox, in crisp white shirt, black tie and jacket and black hipster jeans, slouching about a train in a recreation of his Inter-railing youth on a trip to Paris.  Then he was wandering about Paris with some arty camera work.  Then he was in a bar.  All this to get across the point that Picasso and his best pal Casagemas went to Paris, where Casagemas killed himself.  It took an age.  I understand that not everyone might be familiar with Picasso and his story, but it still took an eternity.

Finally, we got to see a few paintings.  

Pablo Picasso, La Celestina (Oil, 1904)

And then we also had the opinion of a Jungian psychoanalyst thrown in, that Picasso was schizophrenic.  Which didn't sound much like Picasso at all.

Next it was Yves Klein, who actually invented his own colour (International Klein Blue) with the help of pigment specialist Edouard Adam.  The way you do.  Here is one of his textural all-blue paintings in his very own colour.

Yves Klein, IKB 191, 1962

There was a lot about Mr Klein (such as his love of judo), which would again have benefitted from editing, as it didn't really add anything to the main thrust of the programme, which was meant to be an exploration of the colour.  

Thus we got a baffling segment about a photo of Klein throwing himself out of a first floor window and taking a photo of the act (with Dr Fox climbing up a concrete pillar on the spot where the incident took place in order to make some sort of point - mostly that he's rather fit and flexible).  It wasn't made entirely clear what the outcome of the incident was or why it got such a prominent mention in the programme.  Again it was almost as if it was included in order to inject some drama and some sort of action sequence for the presenter.

Anyway, I think what he was getting across was that the point of Yves Klein was to do with blue being a liberating colour (it was the 60s after all), a colour that opened the windows to freedom and the great blue beyond where you could leave your earthly existence behind.  Except the photo was faked.  And wasn't blue.  It was all a bit muddling.

Yves Klein, Le Saut dans la Vide (Photomontage, 1960)

Which took us to the Most Annoying Bit of the whole programme.  A trip to Austin, Texas, to talk to a Saturn 5 astronaut.

Because Dr Fox had travelled all the way to Austin, Texas, and had sought out a real, live Saturn 5 astronaut, there was a long segment where we heard about the mission, where the astronaut repeated himself about the Cold War space race and described the rocket engines shaking him about, and how he nodded off at one point.  All very well, but detail we didn't really need to know about in the context of an art programme, because you could see with crystal clarity where we were being taken, and the whole narrative story arc that was about to clunkingly be made.

At the start we had Giotto with his other worldly blue of heaven.  This astronaut guy was the one who took the photo of Earth as a blue planet.  So blue is actually also the colour of home, and of Earth.  Get it?  Except, it wasn't an artist that was being interviewed, it was an astronaut, and it was a scientific photograph taken as part of his work, not a creative artwork.  The title of the series is "A History of Art", and this final conclusion didn't actually involve an image from the history of art at all.  Ok, so it was a very influential image.  But it isn't art, because it wasn't made by an artist.

So that really, really annoyed me.  

I really can't engage with Dr James Fox at all, and his presenting style.  I really want to, but I just can't.  I want someone who really speaks to me, not tells me how clever they think they are.  Just in the way that his whole outfit and persona should add up to him being one groovy, fit guy, it just kind of doesn't.  Similarly, the programme involves lots of exotic places, and hip camera work and on-the-spot re-enactments, but it somehow doesn't hit the mark.  It's not 'come with me on this journey' it's 'look at me'.  It's just not as insightful or as instructive or intelligent as it could be, and good art programmes are so rare that I really wanted this to be insightful and instructive and intelligent.

For a series that's meant to be about the emotion of colour and the passion of art history, it's all rather cold.  You can see the end point of the arguments way before they happen, and they take a maddeningly long time to finally arrive, via a whole load of extraneous whoffle that really should have hit the cutting room floor. It's frustratingly less than the colourful sum of its parts.

If we had time for astronauts, why didn't we have time to look at the science of the colour blue?  Why is it so intense?  How does it work on our eyes optically?  How does it act on our brains?  Why are Georgian libraries and reading rooms painted blue?  (Blue makes it easier to see printed word.)  Why are motorway signs blue with white lettering? (Ditto.)  Why do painters go to St Ives? (It's the intense blue light, which makes everything clearer and more beautiful, due to the reflection of light and the sky and the curve of the bays with the sea.  And they have good fish and chips.)

In short, it's a series that needs to be a whole lot less Foxy and more carefully thought out in order to actually be "A History of Art in Three Colours".   

Colour?  It just doesn't quite do what it says on the tin.

Next week it's "White".  I'm not sure if I'll be tuning in.

View the episode on BBC i-player here.

WIGGOLD!

Yes, thanks to the Sun, and a mass wearing of cut-out-and-stick-on sideburns, Bradley Wiggins has got Olympic gold.

The Sun

(Print and cut out your own here - you know you want to.)

Unfortunately, I didn't see him set off on the time trial (nor did I see Sanchez unfortunately fall over the start line).  That's because I had a ticket to see Egypt play Belarus at Hampden.  In fact, I'd stupidly paid to see the game.  Nobody else in the stadium had paid for a ticket...

Anyway, this time, there were enough no queues, and enough pies to go round.  Looking round the stadium, it didn't take long to work out why....

Anyone there...?

Tumbleweed

The match was more hopeless than a game of Korean badminton, so I left at half time to go home to watch the cycling time trial.  (Apparently it all ignited at Hampden as soon as I left, to become a scintillating tussle with Egypt beating Belarus 3.1.)

Back at the cycling, Sir Bradley of Wiggins triumphed, and immediately ascended a golden throne outside Hampton Court where his first act was to decree that the National Anthem should be replaced by Paul Weller's You Do Something To Me.  Fair enough.

Bradley Wiggins sits on a throne after his victory in the time trial. Photograph: John Giles/PA

And with Chris Froome in bronze, that's a pretty good  past 10 days for British cycling.

Adam Bridgland // Happy, All Smiles

If you're in Aberdeen over the next few weeks, try and catch this show at Peacock Visual Arts.

Yes, it's a show by fellow Bridgland, Adam, in his first Scottish solo exhibition.  Hurrah for Bridglands!!

Adam's a print-maker and is showing three new editions of screenprints, but he also does sculptures and vinyl installations.  

His prints combine deceptively simple phrases and images that have exactly anticipated all the graphically retro images that are all part of the present mood of the moment.  Here's Adam's  work...

Adam Bridgland, Happy All Smiles (Limited Edition Screenprint, 2012)

 Adam Bridgland, Darling, This Holiday will Solve All Our Problems (Limited Edition Screenprint, 2012)

 Adam Bridgland, Safely, I Built This House For You and For Me (Limited Edition Enamel Plaque, 2009)

Superficially, they come out of the same sort of kitschy mould as this, which we've all seen on a million teatowels and mugs...

However, what Adam's work does is to exploit the gap between the expectations of the superficially nostalgic image with its up-beat text, and the reality of the day-to-day which lies beneath, where nothing is actually quite as rosy or as clear-cut.  

Thus Happy, All Smiles shows a beautiful bouquet, suggesting a loving gift and a secure relationship.  But by the combination of text and image, one undermines the other.  The flowers therefore instead become like a tribute to something that has died.  

Similarly, Darling, This Holiday Will Solve All Our Problems suggests a light-hearted cruise with a heroic-looking ship sailing along majestically.  However, closer inspection shows that it is sailing through rather choppy waters, and the awkward angle begins to suggest that it is in fact a fragile craft that, like the Titanic, might not be as invincible as it first looks.

So instead of merely representing the nostalgic image, as with the ubiquitous 'Keep Calm and Carry On', Adam is going beneath it, exploring the poignancy of it, using the words to take away the safety ties and the reassurance normally contained within the image.  There's humour of course, and it's very playful, but there's also a certain sharpness in the sadness of it, like watching Brief Encounter.

Also look out for Adam's show in Aldeburgh (I love Aldbeurgh, and I've got work in Thompson's Gallery there in the High Street).  It's at the Aldeburgh South Beach Lookout from August 10th-12th, so blink and you'll miss it!

Happy, All Smiles is at Peacock Visual Arts, 21 Castle Street, Aberdeen AB11 5BQ until September 8th.  For more information, go here.

For more information on the artist, go to Adam Bridgland's website.

It's Official - It's the Olympics!

I'm just back from the London 2012 Olympics.  Not that it starts until tomorrow (officially), and not that I was in London.  Because today I was two miles down the road at Hampden to watch the footie.

Surprisingly, given that at one point I thought that I was going to be the only person in Scotland who'd actually paid for an Olympic football ticket, there was a crowd of nearly 38,000, consisting largely of families.  The large numbers obviously took the organisers by surprise as well, as they ran out of Official Pies.

Security to enter the venue was bizarre.  The list of items that you're not allowed to take in is long and complicated - no bags, no drinks, no food, no items that are unofficially sponsored (so don't go in a Pepsi T-shirt), and no sharp items or liquids over 100ml.  So tough luck to the group of Japanese supporters who arrived pulling their luggage, obviously straight off the plane. 

So outside the ground you are given a very, very large clear plastic bag (obviously they're expecting you to try to smuggle in your pet elephant), and asked to deposit metal items (but not cameras), wallets, keys, and a variety of other random stuff like plastic pens from the depths of your handbag.  You then carry the plastic bag literally three yards, go through the gate and then promptly take all the stuff out of the bag and put it back in your handbag.  There's no actual metal detectors or screening, or people looking at the bags.  Baffling.

The Olympic football teams have an age limit on them, so the teams playing today were Honduras Under-18s v Morocco Pre-Teens, and Spain Toddlers v Japan Tweenies.

 

Japan's fans react during the group D,

 London 2012 Olympic Games men's football match (AFP, Graham Stuart)

Honduras and Morocco drew 2-2, while Spain were the definite favourites to win their game.  

However the Japan Tweenies (who bowed politely to the crowd before the start), showed plucky determination, and by the end were breaking away and firing at the goal with spirited determination, if not accuracy.  Warming to the underdogs, and the fact that lack-lustre Spain had obviously thought that the game was in the bag, the crowd began to roar on Japan.  

 Spain's Jordi Alba (R) is challenged by Japan's Gotoku Sakai (L) (AFP, Graham Stuart)

The Spaniards, down to 10 men and suddenly realising that it was all slipping away, began to act in a ridiculously petulant manner, punching opponents and tugging shirts, earning boos from the good-natured crowd.

Japan's Yuki Otsu celebrates after scoring. Photograph: David Moir/Reuters

And so the Japan Tweenies won a historic 1-0 victory, and went home to a well-deserved rusk and a hot bath.

imagine...Dancing with Titian

I caught a really interesting programme on television last night, 'imagine...Dancing with Titian'.  I'm not a great fan of dance, and thought I wouldn't like it, but it was really enthralling.

The programme, with Alan Yentob, documented new artworks and dances inspired by three Titian paintings gathered together at the National Gallery in London for the first time since the 1700s.  The paintings show scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses based on the myth of Diana.  They are...

 

Titian, Diana and Acteon (Oil on canvas, 1556-9)

Titian, The Death of Acteon (Oil on canvas, 1559)

Titian, Diana and Callisto (Oil on canvas, 1559) (from the National Galleries of Scotland)

These pictures were painted by Titian when he was in his 80s, at a time when, as one of the curators pointed out, he may not have been at the height of his physical powers, but he was at the height of his imaginative powers.  

These are mysterious, sensual paintings, full of texture and layers of glazes and flickering licks of glowing paint.  The paint is applied in various ways, sometimes smudges, or brushed, or dabbed, or looking as if fingers have been used.  It must have seemed radically experimental at the time.

This is echoed by the present day artists in the rest of the National's exhibition.  ‘Metamorphosis: Titian 2012’ features new work by contemporary artists Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger in a unique collaboration with The Royal Ballet.

It was the Royal Ballet work that was perhaps the most interesting.  There were three ballets; one inolved a huge industrial robot which represented Diana, and moved on stage in a presence that was both beautiful and menacing, creating a real tension between the human and the mechanical.  And because of the problems that they had with the technology, you literally didn't know what was going to happen, so there was a continual frisson of danger. 

The second ballet had giant mirrors, which reflected not only the dancers but the audience as well, playing with the ideas of voyeurism contained in the Diana story.  

But the last was perhaps visually the most striking, even though it was the simplest, telling the story of the death of Acteon, set upon and killed by the hounds of Diana.  The sets and costumes were designed by Chris Ofili, who is not, I have to say, my favourite artist.  However, here he played an absolute blinder.  

The sets were stunning, with a mysterious forest, like the other-wordliness of the magical forests in Shakespeare, and lit by a huge scarlet red moon.  The fluid costumes and details of the individually designed dogs heads reminded me of the costumes for Parade designed by Picasso in 1917 for the Ballet Russes (which I saw performed some years ago in Edinburgh as part of the Festival).  It was amazing watching the whole creative process, and all the parts coming together.

 

Fusing dance and painting: Federico Bonelli performs 

Diana & Actaeon against the background of Chris Ofili’s psychedelic set design (Picture: © Alastair Muir)

You can watch extracts of the ballets here.

Marianela Nunez and The Royal Ballet in Diana and Actaeon. Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. © ROH/Johan Persson, 2012.

Not all of the connections with the Titian paintings were immediately apparent, but the it was more about the sense of the paintings, the contrasts of sensuality and cruelty, the transformative process.  Chris Ofili's set designs and costumes certainly were the most successful in combining dance with the painterly sense of the Titians.

When Titian painted these Diana pictures in his 80s, at a time in history when life could be cut brutally short at any moment, he must always have felt 'Time's winged chariot hurrying near'.  The fact that Titian's own death and transformation from the mortal was on his mind has greatly informed the work.  This is especially apparent when you look at the paint surface closely, with its wispy, flickery, urgent insubstantial layers of substance conjuring up form, and is possibly most demonstrable in one of his last paintings, the grim Flaying of Marsyas.

Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas (Oil on canvas, 1570-76)

Again from Ovid (read more about it here), it is a truly shocking image, telling the story of the chirpy satyr Marsyas, whose only crime was to play the pipes better than Apollo.  For this, he is flayed alive.  

Again, the paint is flickery and urgent, but spares none of the detail of the horrific scene.  Upside-down, the grimace of the martyred Marsyas looks like a smile.  It looks like Titian is also expressing all the pain and humiliation and injustice of old age itself, with youth and innocence and happiness being pointlessly stripped away until nothing is left.  It's about the pain of being mortal and having a body, and of losing it.  A metamorphosis indeed.

Do have a look at the programme if you can - it's a treat - and the free exhibition is on until 23 September at The National Gallery in London.

See the programme on i-Player here.