It is with a mixture of joy and regret that I must report to you that Mr. Petteresson1 has made his move; the harvest has reached Bergby! As we popped up over the hill and rounded the bend the site of the field was like a skinning of the eyes. Great stripes of hot, larva tones created by the freshly exposed wheat stalks, interspersed with dirty delicate, butter yellow stripes made by the straw laying lightly on top like a frosting. Closer inspection revealed countless little by ways through the straw made by the tractors wheels which created very pleasing random patterns to counter balance the graphic symmetry of the stripes, more importantly however these little connecting lanes provide the plein airist a route through. You see the field is not finished with, and any wholesale rambling across it would be frowned upon due to the possibility of messing up the straw which has been layed out so as to be rolled up by the bailer, probably tomorrow but possibly even tonight. So if a study was to be taken it had to be straight away and with a quick rearrangement of dinner and night schedule I was able to trudge out there toot suite with the necessaries and was sur le motif by six.
I have been looking at the field all summer long, watching the growth and imagining a picture of the hunters perch and in fact I have been over there sketching the structure from the freeway grass, so today it did not take long to decide on the angle of composition. The subject if firstly the cut wheat but also depth, and the deep thrust into space of the stripes. I was tempted to do away with horizon and focus on just the stalks and straw because it seemed so wonderfully deep in colour but because we had with us a fairly large canvas it seemed more appropriate to take a 'scene' to include the perch and green. In Doing the painting we tried to remember the processes we developed during our spring pictures which enabled us to take a large view in one session, in a crisp and orderly fashion, without recourse to a somewhat panicked attack. I am afraid to say however that this evening we fluttered around the edges somewhat and perhaps got a little lost on the way and while not a chalked up loss, it is perhaps due a second session. It may be the case then, that the picture which accompanies this post is not the one I sit looking at now with a heavy heart but one that has some extra work done. In any case we took the soul of it today and whatever we do in terms of adjustments will not change that basic sense of the motif grabbed.
The figure by the way was added late on and from a fresh memory of observing the hunter through the bins2 just last night; a few strokes, cap and a gun. You know we had always imagined a natural affinity between plein air painters and hunters due to our shared experience of standing in a field for hours and hours just watching, at least that's what I had felt was the closest thing to a 'colleague'. Hunting, I thought, was the only other conceivable activity which might afford a similar experience of deep and sustained observation of nature that reveals so much more than the rubber necked glance from the bil or the brisk walk through. Under what other guise might one stand in a field for three hours, just watching? This imagined affinity however was fairly shattered when seeing last night that the hunter on this perch only occasionally glanced up...from his phone!! Oh well, that just leaves the plein air painter in the field and possibly the odd hallucinating youth, but that would be as rare as a singing lynx in these parts.
Looking at it now it feels like there is a lack of vigour in the foreground hay, and thinking, as we do, about the Van Gogh's, it is his study of haystacks in Arles that might best guide us. I am imagining in particular the one in Otterlo known as Wheat Stacks in Provence, featuring two large piles of hay in the centre of the composition. This one has always seemed extra vigorous to me and perhaps counts as both a favourite work but also the one most intimidating; how did he get such energy into the stack and such delicacy into the ladder? Look here, as the years have rolled on, our one time aping of the Dutchman for contemporary art giggles has evolved into more of a dignified 'following' of a master, perhaps in the Japanese way, but I have always counted this work of his among those absolutely unattainable. But of course it's 2020 and that doesn't stop us trying, the only question is how close can we get? The other general failing of today's work I fancy is that its simplicity is not accompanied by the necessary boldness to pull it off. Some Van Gogh scholars refer to a group of his works as 'compacted landscapes', meaning works made up of a simple group of elements; sky, trees, mountains, ground, for example, but which are treated with such vigour and given such movement that their simplicity becomes their power. Not the case for us but we work on.
The post truth stramash is beginning to be sent to fuck off land,3 in my mind at least, and this land I can assure you, is hard to get to and even harder to return from and if we slip over the border there will be no way of keeping our DS work on track, at least the way we have proposed it. So fair warning but lets wait and see. The latest straw, placed lightly on the camels back, was a little bit of nonsense which filtered through only because I was weak enough one evening to visit the 'Russia Today' shit stirring site to see the twist of their plot. In fact the site seemed like a blurry farce of barked headline revealing no bite when clicked, not even anything to provoke an old dark matter snowflake4 like us, but I did find, towards the bottom of their scroll, a piece by a young, rosy cheeked, simpleton from England. A would be alt right 'journalist'; a stepping stone for chan board hate, who would appear to be from a crop of brexiteer patriots who have sprouted from the muck spreading of society that has been going on these past few years. He's come of age in this shower of shit, it's all he knows and it shows! So another screamer, so what? Well his little effort touched on a subject that we have dipped into recently; gaslighting, so we must have a say.
Is it coincidence that young Birchil and old us have arrived at the topic of gaslighting at about the same time? Or is it more likely the the term has been 'trending' and we have both picked it up through our respective little media realities? The latter I feel but the mechanics of it, whether it is controlled or steered and to what extent, I would like to know. A third possibility is to give the same credit that we might give ourselves for connecting the dots and landing on the same square. Maybe some of that maybe none of that, I just thought that his accusation of the "left" gaslighting the "right" to be interesting and a rather telling example of what old Wedling writes is the alt rights major arguing tac-tic of basically saying; "you do it too...".
His story centres on some opinion skirmish over the performance, or not, of certain patriotic British songs at some annual fools gala at the Albert Hall5 and based on this young Birchill tries his best to shoe horn a gaslighting accusation into his muck shooter and fire it at the "left". He does this none too convincingly by accusing the "left" of waging a "culture war" against British tradition then secondly, of gaslighting of the "right" presumably, in their ("the lefts") denial that a culture war even exists? Now, I have no appetite to launch into this with any commitment, firstly because it will only involve rant, and secondly, as I said, I am standing on the platform ogling the Fuck Off Land train on the horizon, but I must have a say on the gaslighting and this Birchall. He seems as green as a shang highed crabber!6 But he's trying hard, too hard perhaps and on the evidence of this piece he doesn't pass muster yet as a real alt right ninny. Maybe he will blossom but the jumbled and rambling piece we speak of is of interest for those very failings and the sense that in them something more can be glimpsed. Here we have evidence of a common alt far right media tac-tic of deflecting threatening criticism directly back to the critics, "you do it too."
One could very well make a case about anyone in politics doing some form of gaslighting so nice try Birchil, but this seemed thin and designed only to counter the widespread accusations of alt right gaslighting performed by Trump and minions, from chan board to fox news to White House. It is bog standard alt right political strategy and can be seen in the making on the chan boards where trolls discuss potential plots to provoke the "left" into a reaction then try to portray that reaction as histerical. Just one example is the attempt to trick the "left" into believing that some completely innocent globally understood hand gesture is in fact a secret sign of the alt right. The committee of trolls eventually settled on the 'OK' gesture and one particular Australian member jokingly waved it to the worlds media from his cuffed hand after his massacre of 51 human beings.7 But perhaps its time to go further (as we prepare to board) and say that the 'post truth' era in its entirety really refers to the process by which a tidal wave of alt far right politics has washed over the entire world. This era has been, and continues to be characterised by alt right political gaslighting. Furthermore this started not with Brexit and not with Trump but with Putin and the weaponized immigration campaign to flood Europe with refugees from Syria in order to put pressure on European structures and to bolster far right, anti European parties. Of course we throw out an idea like that fully expecting it to be batted right back at us with holes punched through, but so be it, that is how we've divvied it up, and think about it, didn't that event spark something? Have not alt far right parties from Milan to Minsk built their castles atop of that refugee crisis? Little Vladz little Vladz sent them all in, and scored with Brexit his greatest win! And the rest might be history.
Yours
John
PS. Is it not now completely absurd for us to frame any civilised discussion in terms of "left" and "right"? There are a million and one "lefts" and at least three or four "rights".
1 Christer Pettersson is the local farmer.
2 Binoculars.
3 Phrase first used in DS 1, Work 35, paragraph 3.
4 Borrowing the scientific concept of for an unseen mass, Gregory Sholette conceptualises the thousands of art graduates around the world as a mass of 'creative dark matter' which contains political potential, see Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture. Snowflake is a derogatory term which emerged in a post truth, alt right context to describe a 'liberal' but now in use more generally to describe someone who is very sensitive and easily offended.
6 The kidnapping of someone to work on a ship at sea. Crab fisherman are rarely shang highed.
7 Refers to the Christchurch mosque.