A good read

It has been a while since I wrote about what I've been reading. My last exultant cry was at the completion of Volume 2 of the Picasso biography. After that I read the catalogue for the Picasso: Challenging the Past exhibition at the National Gallery in London. It was an interesting read even though I had not seen the exhibition; but in a way I was caught up with Cubism, and so I suspect I shall return to the catalogue later in my progress through his life and work.

On loan from a friend, I read a few of James Lee Burke's books, including Tin Roof Blowdown, and am impressed with his ability to conjure a place, its feel, food, sounds, and smells. However, unfortunately, I quickly found that the plots were formulaic, so I shall have quite a gap before reading another.

I had looked forward to Barbara Nadel's Ashes to ashes. This is in her series of books about an undertaker in the East End of London between the two World Wars, and I have found the first two fascinating historically, and was anticipating the third. Disappointment ensued. This one is set wholly in St Paul's cathedral during a bombing raid, and did not engage me at all. I found it to be the product of lots of fascinating research but lacking a good story.

On the other hand, my current bedtime reading is Barbara Nadel's latest Inspector Ikmen novel:River of the dead (sorry, previously I had put Pretty dead things), and I am thoroughly enjoying that. Indeed were it not for Wimbledon tennis being on this week I would be wanting to plough on with reading the novel.

Donna Leon's The girl of his dreams is her enjoyable latest novel set in Venice. That with An incomplete revenge by Jacqueline Winspear, and a whole list of other detective stories are passed on to my mother - not only so that she can enjoy them, but it gives us something else to talk about. Unfortunately she sees very few people.

I enjoyed them all:

When will there be good news? by Kate Atkinson is an absorbing novel as well as a mystery, and is set in Edinburgh which is a bonus for me.

The brass verdict by Michael Connelly is up to his usual good standard.

Tea time for the traditionally built by Alexander McCall Smith is lovely, as ever - but I must admit that the books are rather amuses bouches rather than a decent meal.

Private patient by P.D.James is her long awaited latest, and I found better than her previous two.

Careless in red by Elizabeth George is ok, but I found it told me a little more about surfing than I wanted to know. It did make me think that being a writer with a series devoted to one main protagonist must be a pain at times if you want to write about something different. This novel has ex Inspector Lynley, emotionally fragile - so a known character but in an altered state, and also in this case in a different setting. However, his London police sidekick also is involved, so, .... Anyway, it's good fun.

Murder in the rue de Paradis by Cara Black is as ever fast paced, feisty, and political and I love it. Aimee Leduc is an IT wise fashion loving version of V.I Warshawski, but more enjoyable for me because it is set in Paris rather than Chicago.

A darker domain by Val McDermid was also much enjoyed, but somehow read slightly as if it was being written with later adaptation for TV in mind.

Other bedtime reading included Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, which I had bought for my husband. It is a delightful exploration of a sense of place, and struck me very much as a male version of the novels of Anne Tyler.

Talking of a sense of place, I read Real Swansea by Nigel Jenkins. This is an excellent history of the city written with a personal passion by a poet from the area himself. I enjoyed this as much as any good novel. Something had attracted me to the book in the Mission Gallery in Swansea, and I'm really glad that I bought it as the area is one we plan to revisit. Nigel Jenkins teaches writing at the University there, and if his teaching skills area as good as his writing, I envy his students.

A short history of progress is an interesting publication of lectures by Ronald Wright. It tells of what we have not learned from our history, repeating mistakes made even in Neandertal times. Subjects such as these can be fascinating, but also rather depressing comment on the inabilities of human kind.

Deaf sentence is by David Lodge, a witty writer whose work I enjoy. Once more it is set in a university milieu, and includes the humour and sadness of human interaction - and in this case the difficulties of growing old.

This is mostly bedtime reading. After the Picasso I have not read much 'serious' stuff. I did enjoy Linocuts of the Grosvenor School, and of course the Penland book on bookmaking which I raved about a couple of posts ago. Finally - I have just read the catalogue of the Unpopular Culture exhibition we saw last year. The catalogues had been sold out at the time, and it was good to revisit the subject. Indeed we are going to try to catch the show again on its tour round the country.

I have now read most of the catalogue for the Richard Long exhibition. Once more it is an excellent publication with the initial essay illuminating influences on Long during his student days. I found the description of composer John Cage's philosophy at the time fascinating, and I suspect that once I have finished the final essay I shall return to re-read the book before going on to Land and Environmental Art.

Good companions

Exhibition poster

Walking and poetry, yes -
poetry and books, yes -
walking and landscape, of course -
landscape and mud, inevitably -
walking and books, maybe -
books and mud, -?

It is all very much one man and his need to walk, to make marks in the landscape of his walk, to leave those marks and record them - then to step back while we are drawn in to contemplate his trail. A man with a personal passion - controlled in his use of exact geometry to make his own marks, both outdoors and indoors. Except when that passion spills out literally in the splashes of his energetic mud frescoes.


Photo from Daily Telegraph interview

I had not thought about artists' book in relation to the exhibition, but was continuing my reading Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books while waiting for Tate Britain to open. I was delighted to find a whole room dedicated to Richard Long's books.


Walking and sleeping (from the V&A collection)

This exhibition spoke to me on so many levels because it was dedicated to the artist himself. I have found in the past that for me Long's work does not come out well when displayed with the art of others. The poetry has sometimes seemed inconsequential, the photographs hemmed in, the circles of rock facile, the annotated maps lazy, ... but together, solo, when in context, the body of work is credibly powerful and moving.

I think this happens to me more and more - the appreciation of one artist's work without the distraction of a dessert trolley of accompanying variety. But of course, having said that - the next exhibition in London which I'm planning to visit is the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition which is not just variety but ... visual chaos!

The Long has started to make a deep impression, however, and I shall be savouring the work, my thoughts and developments from them for some time.

New contribution

Design in progress - something I'm going back and forth on!

Today I visited the Richard Long exhibition in London, and I have begun contributing to the Ragged Cloth Cafe with a piece on that. I shall write something for here too, soon.

Inner thoughts

Flying tonight 290 x 208mm

It is a strange phenomenon that the more I am thinking creatively about my work's development the less I feel able to put it into words. I believe that this is because the thoughts are fluid and no decisions are set yet, and so nothing can be pinned down sufficiently to form a sentence. Even I am not yet sure of the whole picture of what I'm thinking, and I cannot engage in any specific descriptions.

I do find that a good jazz concert can do wonders to cut through spurious possibilities to a beautiful clarity, and often great ideas have come that way. At present, however, I'm working it out for myself. Although I'm not sure how far I have got yet, and don't know where I'm finally going - I am enjoying the journey. This is the only kind of circumstance in which I don't mind not being prepared.

The two pieces I have completed recently are the nearest to describing the state of my mind, and so here they are, above and below.

Juggling 171 x 107mm

Brilliant book

I cannot stop opening and reading this book. I take it with me between my sewing room and the sittingroom to keep looking at all the wondrous inspiring photographs and to read the interesting and informative text about styles and artists. That aside from the brilliant step by step elements which unusually cover several practical aspects of bookmaking that I'm pondering and considering in my own work at present - which is why I ordered the book in the first place.

This blind buy has turned out to be way better than I ever expected, or even hoped.

Influences and inspirations

Paul Neagu Palpable object 1970 - 72 (Tate collection)

The further I get into this designing and making art lark the more I am able to distinguish retrospectively between influences and inspirations affecting both the work itself and my making of it. It is an interesting exercise to look back and see how events, sightings, and experiences have marked my progress.

Today two sets of thoughts co-mingled. Forty years ago three doors opened for me: I became engaged, I graduated, and I met Paul Neagu. A few of us are returning to Edinburgh later this year to celebrate our graduation, and I have been reminiscing about the late 60s. One of my favourite occupations used to be lone visits to the gallery of Richard Demarco. These visits were my introduction to contemporary art, and Richard Demarco was an incredibly generous host. He very often saw me wandering about and spoke to me at length about the artists whose work I was taken with.

In 1969 there was an exhibition of work by Paul Neagu. I found the work extraordinary - it stretched my brain. Again Demarco was not only generous with his own time, but also introduced me to Neagu who talked all afternoon about the work. I cannot remember specifics, but do remember the feeling of shutters and windows being opened and a sense of light and sounds flooding into a previously dark closed room. The light left me blinking for a long time, but eventually it influenced what I could see as well as how I see, and my senses have been primed to take in the slightest new nuance.

The exhibition included many containers, curious boxes which intrigued me and which I have often since dreamed about. The one at the top of this post resembles the kind of thing, except that what I remember most is lots of towers. By one of those strange coincidences, recently I have been thinking about artists' books and making my own. I have been scrolling through the V&A's archive looking at work such as Genevieve Seille's Mappa ed Veneiis, (and also coincidentally Meabh Warburton's blog recently reminded me of the artist Tom Phillips and his wondrous book A Humument). Now I find that my now doubtless distorted memories of Paul Neagu's work have become an inspiration for my own.

Life provides such a glorious spiral, rather like my beloved Gugenheim Museum in New York, where as one progresses it is possible to look back, look across, and make new connections and enhanced decisions all the time.

A dip in my 'archives'

From time to time I feel the need of a private viewing - a bit of individual nourishment using collected reproductions of an artist's work while situated within my own workspace. One topic I've been loosely pondering recently is repetition, and the other day my mind strayed towards the paintings of Sonia Lawson. At the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition shows she is entitled to include the usual Royal Academician's quota (I cannot remember off hand how many that is - six?), and every year I enjoy seeing her work.

As can be seen in the links, including this one for the Boundary Gallery in London, she not only deals with repetition, but also does a nice line in powerfully brooding women. They conjure characters from novels: elusive yet magnetic, universal but unknowable - wondrous stuff.

I immediately took to her work because she seemed to be one of those artists who could see inside my head (another of those is Alice Kettle - see the link at the side of this blog). This may sound arrogant, but what I mean is that this was a language that I recognised - not that I immediately wanted to copy what she has done. I had been doodling repetitions in a generally similar way for some time,

and I also am very drawn to such enigmatic females. It is a tremendous reassurance and encouragement to find such an artist whose work I admire. I love the surfaces of her paintings too, carved and scratched into like work on a wall, rough and looking as if it has been around since Roman times.

I have a folder of catalogues and postcards of her work, and one of my favourites is the postcard from the 1993 RA Summer Exhibition reproduced above: Three Seated Women charcoal and watercolour 81 x 108.5cm. Looking through her work again has given me just the boost I needed in my vaguely sagging self confidence (which it does from time to time).