NEW YORK GIANTESSES.

Franz Gertsch
Museum of Modern Art,New York June 1990.
I was in New York to participate in the exhibition,"New Scottish Prints", at The Mary Ryan Gallery.After taking part in a ruinous interview with an American Print magazine in the morning,I made my way to the Museum of Modern Art. "MoMA" has a lot of "Trophy" Art & there is  much in the way of overblown abstraction.Still nursing a fuzzy hangover from a night in the "Kit-Kat" Club & wandering,I found myself in one of the side galleries where a temporary exhibition was running.
Over the past 30 years I must have seen--or at least attended--many hundreds of art exhibitions,remarkably few of which linger in my mind.However,this collection of wood-engravings by the Swiss Artist,Frans Gertsch,has never strayed far from my recollection.It was perfect in so many ways.
The show consisted of a series of giant prints(8x6 feet),each portraying a single,elegant & enigmatic, female head.In my experience,most contemporary woodcuts & engravings--certainly on this scale-- seem to take their cue from their expressionist counterparts in Weimar Germany,being rough-hewn & looking as if they've been carved out using an axe.These,on the other hand,had been worked on using the smallest of woodcutting tools;the subtlest half-tone gradations being meticulously picked  out inch by inch over the entire 48 square feet of the wood block.In terms of finesse,each image was like The Royal Mail's "Barrington" Edition but bigger--much bigger.

Each impression was printed by hand ,using optical lenses to rub the back of each sheet of specially commissioned  paper from the Japanese specialist Iwano Heizoburo.Sometimes it would take an entire day for Gertsch & his assistants to make just one impression.The finished blocks were each printed in variable editions, each in different--although essentially monochromatic--colourways & variations.
Visually & as an aesthetic experience,the effect of being in a room full of these gargantuan beauties is hard to describe.I've read various encomia to the works of Mark Rothko & the cumulative effect of being immersed in his abstractions.Though I've never quite seen the point of Rothko,being "immersed" in Gertsch's monolithic prints had a similar effect on me.Talk about "eyes following you round the room"--here there was no escape from multiple,silvery hued Natascha's & kittenishly probing Doris's.Looming over you from every line-of- sight, these intaglio'd leviathans eyed you inscrutably from all angles.
This ability to produce multiple copies,or more accurately,"impressions" of your image,is one of the most satisfying facets of  printmaking.One can spend weeks or possibly years labouring over a metal etching plate or woodblock,honing,proofing & otherwise fine-tuning it.It can be a long & arduous process.However at the end of it you have an object,microscopically sculpted in low-relief,which can then be very quickly inked up & printed with normally little effort.Risks can be taken with chromatics & tonalities during the printing, in the full knowledge that if it goes wrong....Hey,you can always bin it & print another one.Having printed many editions myself,I know there are few things more artistically satisfying than seeing a long-worked image in multiple;pristine & stretched out in front of you.
Sometimes quantity--& this show was the finest demonstration of this I have ever seen--definitely does have a quality all of it's own.

                                                                                                      

NEWS & BOOZE.

It is the end of an era.

In a few weeks,"Sunny", the proprietor of "News & Booze" is selling up & moving out of the Gallowgate.Gone,Free at Last! Young Sunny  has run this colourful shop-- opposite my Studio--since taking over from his father,"Big Peter",more years ago than I care to remember.
He has catered to the needs of this diverse community with great good humour & generosity of spirit,providing a wide range of goods to the people who cross his doors daily: the lank-haired & wan oddball artists & permanently skint beatniks of Dovehill Studios,the less-fortunate homeless vagabonds from the various hostels nearby,the confused & the drug-addled;football-crazed nutters en route to Parkhead,giggling teenage boy-band aficianado's queuing up all day at "The Barrowland Ballroom",Barra's traders & customers,ladies of the night(& day),broken-down alcoholic concert violinists & the occasional hammer wielding maniac on a post-prandial rampage,
He has served them all equally & with civility--ever considerate, with his can of "Everglade" air freshener at hand for his, sometimes,less than fragrant patrons.
His shop has had a wide range of goods,from newspapers,shoelaces,tinned foods,sweets,cigarettes & baccy--to cleansing fluids,bin bags & basic pharmeceuticals,including a surprisingly wide range of painkillers.Also,as the name might imply,"News & Booze" sells booze-- & lots of it.In this Twilight Zone of an area there is much demand for it--red biddy,Buckfast Tonic & economy family-size bottles of "Pulse","Frosty Jacks" &"White Blood" ciders being particularly popular tipples.All this served to a pleasing, in-shop soundtrack ranging from Philip Glass &Bela Bartok to Blue Oyster Cult. Amiable,well informed & cultured,Sunny is always willing to chat,whether on current affairs,music,art,bodybuilding,tongue & nipple infibulation or anything else you fancy.
Latterly,in these austere times,he has even kindly provided me with free, "sell-by" date, Plain sliced loaves.

PRECIOUS NOTHING.

"Every Day"/"(MLitt)"

Gallery of Modern Art/Glasgow Print Studio Gallery
Dr Jim al Kalili on his wonderful BBC4 programme on the Atom summed up his subject by describing it as like a giant cathedral but with relatively nothing  in it,being almost devoid of mass.This tricky concept kept flitting through my mind as I wandered through "GoMA" this morning.
GoMA,like so many public modern art, galleries has all the echoing chambers & reverential hush of a great church--or,indeed,a great library--but,like the interior of Kalili's Atom has precious little in the way of substance.It's a while since I last visited,but nothing seems to have changed much.Downstairs is an exhibition of sculpture,which seems to be a rearrangement of the last few shows I saw here;some second hand furniture here& there,broken masonry positioned on the floor just-so,bent steel wires signifying absolutely nothing,a plaster cast of a pocket digital camera sat upon a table like some holy relic.Nearby,on the floor lies an open umbrella--one of those handy,see-through ones--an artwork so unsure of itself,it solemnly bears the title,"No Title".This seems to be Art about Art--or at least,Art Museums--& nothing else.How one longs for some red meat,some conviction,passion or belief.Soviet Socialist Realism...Hell,National Socialist Realism.Ivo Saliger,Arno Brekker...Beryl Cook....Anything.
Not for the first time do I feel sorry for the gallery attendants who,like bored electrons,wander hither & thither,eyeing this solitary visitor--it has to be said--with some suspicion.Maybe they think I'm going to attempt a runner with the "Powder-coated Steel,painted & screenprinted aluminium "Law of Large Numbers 2008".
Upstairs,another artist has had the brainwave of defacing her collection of old "National Geographics"--or "re-appropriating" them,as the accompanying texts have it--& making a very thinly spread exhibition of collages from the result.For some reason,Horatio McCulloch's lovely view in oils of "Loch Maree" has been thrown into the mix.Upside down.
Everywhere there are verbose labels & weird explanatory texts regarding "Appropriation" & "Re-Contextualising"(both terms surely fig leaves to mask the vampirism that has been chewing up much of the arts this last wee while)just so we get the point that this is Art of true worth & not just the result of folks too lazy to actually make anything themselves.
Here's Nicholas Serota:" I think the difficulty for many observers of contemporary art is to understand that the everyday in art is in itself an insight,rather than necessarily a representation".
Quite so.

.

A short walk away,in King Street,The Glasgow Print Studio Gallery is showcasing work by recent graduates of a new Post-Graduate course at Glasgow School of Art,"Fine Art Practice(MLitt)".

I have no idea what "MLitt" means.I'm assuming,in these overcredentialed times that the M stands for Master ,but of what? Littoral....Litteracy? I'll probably never know.

Anyway,according to the litterature,on this course,"(some) students embark on a focussed exploration of their chosen medium,whereas others begin to challenge the very limitations conventionally associated with that medium".Not wishing to trample on the sensitivities of such recent graduates I'll just say that the results,as seen here,are,in the main, remarkably similar in spirit & execution to those seen in GoMA's "Every Day" & indicate a course dedicated to turning out yet another generation of Glaswegian "conceptualists" & would-be Turner Prize-winners.I wonder....Personally I would have thought that particular market  was getting just a wee bit crowded --if you can see a bandwagon ,it's normally too late to jump on it.

Incidentally,I wonder what the course lectures & lessons actually consist of ?

I had a horrible vision during my visit of the Blue Peter Studio circa 1970: Bearded,corduroy-clad Open University types presiding over specialised seminars in switching lightbulbs on & off,rhapsodising over dusty "post-modern" architectural plans  & holding workshops exploring best-practice in the use & applications of multi-coloured sticky tape.I wonder what the money's like.....?                                                                                                                                          

"IN THE SULCUS OF HER BUTTOCKS LAY ALL THE POSSIBILITIES OF A SEXUALLY BENEVOLENT PSYCHOPATHOLOGY."

Photo by Van Credenza       www.vancredenza.blogspot.com

Well,that line from JG Ballard is what comes mind when I look at this strangely erotic sculpture,but maybe that's just me.You may well see something very different.
The photograph was sent to me by my colleagues at "Van Credenza Blogspot" & shows the latest sculpture to be installed on The Forth & Clyde Canal, near  The "Bog" en route to the upgraded Marina at the Falkirk end.It joins the oversized metal horses,or "Kelpies" already there(& around the Falkirk Wheel),& is part of the local authorities' attempts to renew the area.
Made of Steel,this artwork is big,it's installation necessitating a very pricey landscaping effort--a lot of trees were removed to position it here.I haven't actually seen it yet,but am assured that it is the length of a public house,or at least,The Commercial Hotel at Larbert Cross.It looks weirdly attractive & should rust quite nicely.
Public Art Sculpture commissions seem to be all the rage these days.Local authorities the length & breadth of the land seem to be in competition to see who can put up the maddest & most ludicrously overpriced.Maybe--at least in PR terms--it's the "Angel of the North" effect.
In Scotland it seems to be the same sculptor all the time:Andy Scott.I wonder what other,underemployed hewers of wood & marble think?He seems to be cleaning up in the public-funded Art Sweepstakes--everywhere you look--at least in Central Region--you will come across big hands sprouting semi-mermaids or nodding horses' heads,modelled on computers & fashioned from small,multiple units.This system of sculpting,of which there is probably a name, was amusing at first--small "units" such as matchstick heads,buttons, jam-jars or tyres used to construct a larger shape--but is starting to piss me off.Like architecture,but unlike music or paintings,the public has no say in whether they have to look at these things or not.
One of my favourite scenes in the film,"Fight Club" was where the main character set his acolytes various,anarchic tasks,including one where they were charged with "Destroying Public Art",including one giant ball,exploded loose of it's moorings & sent rolling down a boulevard....