http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/features/peel_tributes.shtml?comment=response#comment

very, very sad. this man was important to me, and many others. thought he would go on forever, for some reason

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

work in progress. stump picture

 

RAMBLING THOUGHTS ON GLENN BROWN

went yesterday to the glenn brown show at the serpentine. it was a queasy, disturbing experience; in the right way, that is.

he paints flawless, photorealist pastiches of heavy impasto boys like frank auerbach http://www.af-moma.no/english/kunstnere/auerbach.html or willem de kooning. but brown paints them flat, the surface is perfect, like a magazine page or glossy photograph. the painterly gestural brushstroke, with all it's supposed connotations of immediacy and presence(i will come back to that word in a minute) is embalmed, rendered as style.

Mannerism: "Like "modernism", the term is one of the few style designations whose label was self-applied; it comes from the Italian maniera, or "style," in the sense of an artist's characteristic "touch" or recognizable "manner." " (full definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism)

auerbach's portraits are a particular reference point; they are painted over a long series of sittings, and, in the end the process takes over to the extent that the "picture" is virtually unrecognisable. the face is as much modelled in the paint (like in plasticene) as delineated. what this leaves is a sense of presence. an index of the confrontation between sitter and artist, the record of a process of looking and looking again. resemblance becomes submerged under this, but presence - read through the archeology of the paint, the history of the marks, bleeds through the gouged smeared and cratered surface.

this is not a digression, this is an attempt to try and clarify the whole iconic, mdernist brushstroke thing. of course, it's been parodied before, frequently by lichtenstein http://www.hamiltonselway.com/lichtenstein/brushstroke.htm who turned the whole signifier of authenticity, passion and presence into an ironic trademark, rendering it isolated and stylised, in the coloured dots of cheap newspaper printing of the time.

 in the footsteps of gerhard richter, who paints photographs (not their subjects, but the photographs themselves) with absolute fidelity, including the medium's drawbacks: focusing problems, depth of field issues etc. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/redon_ext.html (hope that link works, it seems a bit wierd) brown renders the whole thing photographically, using tiny brushes, with an anal sense of detail. but he takes the whole thing further, using blur and depth of field problems to turn auerbach portraits into badly taken photographs of people with the trademarked impasto faces, space is implied, in something that was all surface.  he has said himself that he prefers to use bad photographic reproductions of his source material, with the off colours. i thin that the focal depth thing is something that he has introduced from elsewhere. this leads another step away from the "original".

the flattened brushstroke has become a tic, a trademark, a signifier of inauthentic authenticity; and is now elaborated over fragments of rembrandt, hals, fragonard. this compulsive smear and arabesque crawls over every surface, like decay. or maybe under every surface, like worms that are breaking out. the effect is heightened by the eyes of the portraits, which in quite a few cases are occluded with cataracts.

i am developing a mental list of artists and artifacts that belong to the genre of what i would call psychedelia gone bad, rancid. the flowers, stange beasts, and horror vaccui elaboration has moved beyond the charming, and has broken down into decay. some of the cure's music belongs to this genre, the ancient mariner, against nature, the most deathly cloying music by this mortal coil, some of piranesi's decorative work, some anonymous baroque grotesquery, and now glenn brown.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1334811,00.html

brilliant! no surnames, that's a concept! i have no idea though, what mongolia is like. i'm imagining it as an agglomeration of villages, in which case the first name only thing could work; in the absence of transient population, where every one of your neighbours would know you anyway.....(this is probably a fantasy). otherwise, it's an insane but likeable system.

"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep." (le corbusier)

i'll settle on the sleeping bread. dysfunction autodidact. machine housing is gaunt edwardian, fat went to the town hall, beaux-arts; it's swelling cupola bulks over the belt of road. panacea to urban discharge, conjured by industry. institutional tiled staircase, reminder of the spike. however intended, three generations per unit.

whilst boomtime bubble spec bred lamped fanlighted boxes, raw orderly cul-de-sacs, the entablatures of workshops were restored. wood floors, for those who could afford to heat. Warehouses of taste, sprung from the beige interior of sweden.

i'll settle on the sleeping bread. dysfunction autodidact. machine housing is gaunt edwardian, fat went to the town hall, beaux-arts; it's swelling cupola bulks over the belt of road. panacea to urban discharge, conjured by industry. institutional tiled staircase, reminder of the spike. however intended, three generations per unit.

whilst boomtime bubble spec bred lamped fanlighted boxes, raw orderly cul-de-sacs, the entablatures of workshops were restored. wood floors, for those who could afford to heat. Warehouses of taste, sprung from the beige interior of sweden.

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep." (le corbusier)

i'll settle on the sleeping bread. dysfunction autodidact. machine housing is gaunt edwardian, fat went to the town hall, beaux-arts; it's swelling cupola bulks over the belt of road. panacea to urban discharge, conjured by industry. institutional tiled staircase, reminder of the spike. however intended, three generations per unit.

whilst boomtime bubble spec bred lamped fanlighted boxes, raw orderly cul-de-sacs, the entablatures of workshops were restored. wood floors, for those who could afford to heat. Warehouses of taste, sprung from the beige interior of sweden.

"journey who chose none familiar! child listened afraid died tea mother low pair wild, dog wonderful back but grave kindness lost appearance size" thoughts keeping used north got notice yellow chair description,together just nor determined pleasant placed hes had it? leaving somebody resolved gentle skiing. probably clean news deep twenty monday told leader program. center practice its tuesday! sincerely lived laugh knowledge."

"explain part me since education weight, concentrate sugar no somewhere cold teacher whom waiting? repeat laid worthy wish changed kindness things usual he" sledding speak continue mention during fly" sale his feelings church pride.nor going one scene. noble sun other safe means learn brought truly! page yethoped hospital! fast saying reply case grew decision fact ran front machine, slow development last thursday hoping lady ye" suddenly keep peculiar school presence was dare as
achieve."

i've saved a lot of half-drunk beers; my room is starting to smell well yeasty with it. (maybe it always does). it's the last can that you might open when you're already drunk, and you think that you want more, but nausea or unconsciousness intervenes before you can finish it. it is the physical evidence of the edges of an appetite, or the capacity of an appetite. for that reason it is a numinous substance. i intend to decant at least some of this into jars, provisionally entitled "what i couldn't swallow". because i can swallow a lot. but this stuff marks the edges of that. thinking of pickling things in it- don't know exactly what yet. could be pomegranites as it's the time of year, and they are beautiful and have the associations necessaryhttp://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa100801a.htm contains a lot of fascinating pomegranate stuff. apparently apart from it's association with death, it has also been seen as a figure for plenty, because of it's many seeds. the association with (sickening) abundance, marking the edges of desire, is a useful one to me here.

obviously the image below is one of my heap photographs. it has been subtly manipulated by me, with an adjustment layer to desaturate the whole thing. i then make holes through this (or slightly erase it). this hopefully has the effect of  making the brightly coloured crap stand out agianst it as a network of marks and lines. i see this process as sort of similar to my habit of erasing the street names from maps, but the other way around. it's a formal thing, but it's also something else. all the best processes have to have this something else in them. they have to mean something to you, as you do them, if not to anyone else.

i never take it that far, because i want it to read as a coherent space, but it could be used to destroy the depth of the image, by totally fucking around with the arial perspective, things could be made to jump forwards or float, to the extent that one would be looking across a membrane of colours, rather than looking into a space. i have started to work on some heap drawings that do just this, though not in colour. no attempt is made to creat a coherent space across the whole surface. the perspective of individual elements varies. i want it to have the effect of something more blind, tactile, like running the fingers over skin, where there is the feeling of variations in texture, pockets of warmth, dryness, moisture, but no sense of space. also, no coherent overall plan; just the accumulation of detail that you get from real heaps, as each new element is abandoned on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"In the early nineteenth century, certain figures - Charles Nodier, for example...and Filippo Buonarroti,
a master conspirator who was much admired by such men as Bakunin - make a point of inventing, and
disseminating information about a number of wholly fictitious secret societies. So convincing was this
information that perfectly innocent people found themselves being harried and persecuted for alleged
membership of clandestine organizations that did not exist. Confronted by such persecution, the victims,
as a means of self-defense, began to form themselves into a real secret society which conformed to
the blueprint of the fictitious one."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

(to be found on http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/masons/communist.html)

i liked the above a great deal, it reminded me of robert anton wilson's illuminati trilogy, which i read back in the '80's, and was a great laugh. it seemed to be a weaving of all possible occult conspiracy theories together, inventing a story to make them seem as "credible" as possible.

obviously, conspiracy theories are still alive and well. i personally doubt, and have always doubted the existence of al-quida as a coherent international conspiracy. disparate groups doing their own thing, and sharing the name and broad goals maybe. but i bet that even the name wasn't widespread (or the groups) until the "west" declared war on it. the passage above more or less explains the mechanism. if al-quida didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it. can't have a decent war without an enemy. even better; a secret enemy who could be anywhere. this justifies any action. so the dead look a lot like civilians? that's because they were secret members. that country appeared to have no ill intentions towards it's neighbours, they were secret intentions. no intentions or means have come to light - they wouldn't would they, it was all secret. the people picked off the street and interned were just normal people going on with their lives- it's hardly likely that they would let on that they were part of a secret conspiracy. it's invisible? it's secret innit. undetectable? all the more dangerous for that reason.

"It is largely forgotten now that almost everyone in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe believed that malevolent persons were busy poisoning food stores, water supplies, even the fish in the sea, using a colourless, odourless, undetectable substance called aqua tophana, which was said to do its fatal work with insensible slowness. An unpopular person had only to be labelled a poisoner to be lynched by a mob."

"The last word on Delusion" AC Grayling  Guardian  Saturday May 6,2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4015172,00.html

so it couldn't be tasted, smelled, or seen. undetectable, in short; it could poison the whole sea, and it worked so slowly that you couldn't tell you were being poisoned. maybe to the untrained observer it was so slow that people might ascribe your demise to old age, or some other infirmity. but the whole world could be poisoned, the evidence is all around- people (and fish and animals) die; slowly. the fact that it "seems" to be from "natural causes" (hah!) makes it all the more sinister. and guess what, i've found a whole load of stuff on the masons and illuminati, and one of their favourite weapons? yup, the old aqua tophana. in most of this literature, the masons are simultaneously bankers, anarchists, gnostics, communists, and (most importantly it seems, for a lot of the writers; think that they are taking the whole protocols of the elders of zion waaay too seriously) jews.

most interestingly, i have learned this afternoon that aqua tophana was a favourite with the illuminati who ran the french revolution. funny, i thought that they liked the guillotine, but the terror was just a cover, obviously, for their really sinister, secret stuff.(?)