The summer is over. Following our return from Backe in mid July there has been one distraction after another, the chief of those was our own being laid low for a good two weeks with a virus that in the end turned out not to be the covid. We tested ourselves over by the running track, an experience we recorded for the singularity by the way, but in the course of the process we managed to irritate our throat to the extent that our already bad cough became an uncontrollable jerky tickler for another couple of weeks, rendering me a threat in the public eyes. So we laid low.
Our sorry state was also made available to the Borg in a video message from Stockholm where we boosted our morale by starring at their Cezannes, the still life in particular.1 Cezanne and his sensational ways have crept up behind us and knocked Van Gogh off our shoulder and into the waiting cocked hat! Again! It often happens in the autumn I have come to realise; a result of temperamental shift related to seasonal change. Old Vincent will dust himself off, begin the climb back up and come spring time will give Cezanne another one of the kicks in the back he so fears and we'll be off to the races once more no doubt.2 We have have mentioned all this to you or the Borg I cant remember which so my apologies if I repeat. The temperament change this year has occurred much earlier however and the work above is the result. A six session affair to get back into the habit of painting but also a chance to talk to the Borg and try and steer our season a little. I am not at all sure what we talked about but we stuck to our general task of showing it what we do. Make of it what you will.
The crypto art business continues to dazzle us each time we turn to it. Hirst's The Curreny project is eye watering. Value changes to write home about, what would old Dave Beech make of it I wonder? We bashed the poor Borgs ear about all that craic3 and no mistake so I'm reluctant to rehash it all in text. In fact we have held fourth and delivered ourselves in video message to the extent that we know not what to tell you.
We need canvas and paint.
Our easel is falling apart.
We have no money and await the decision of City Post with absolute serenity.4
We took mother to the hospital to see about her eye. Yes that is worth a mention as it caused us a mischief. We encountered a specimen of a doctor who, having immediately referred us to a specialist with a triumphant click of the mouse, ("I cant do anything") he proceed to inquire as to our opinions about life in Sweden, how it differs from England, about our views on Brexit, and the state of the world! This began as friendly and welcome pleasantries but turned to a strange exercise whereby the good doctor seemed to be carefully extracting opinions and framing his next question accordingly. Call us paranoid or call me someone who just lives and breaths but he displayed the hallmarks of the sly far right winger, trying for some reason to establish our opinions in order to ascertain how far he might go with his own. But this was not clear. At times he spoke like a liberal, in the next breath like an alt righter. After pumping us about Brexit and revealing his own view that "we must stick together", he talked of the world, under the spell of nationalism, going back in time. Then gender equality. Equality between men and women is something that Sweden has fought for over the years he says, "but now there are so many immigrants who don't want that, its a big worry to the Swedish people. They don't have the Swedish culture." Come again DR? "Yes and the Chinese..." Mother mentioned our stint in Japan and so followed another volley of questions, then about China, are the Japanese like the Chinese he asks? As similar as Sweden and France I told him. "Ha ha that different..." Then he tells us of how China have invested in African countries which is good because they need investment, "but then they take over, they steal their countries." We have heard the like and some sinister business indeed regards the selling of the Chinese hi tech surveillance system but the Doctor pressed on. "You cannot trust the Chinese state." Well yes I agreed they're at some hundred year war strategy and no mistake. "I don't trust China." Fine. "I don't trust Chinese people." Right! This last remark was the final whistle for me and I rose and announced our departure.
The medical doctor we had just visited professionally found it appropriate to say the words 'I don't trust Chinese people'!! How can this be?
I'm off for my second jab.
We are in the queue outside, then we'll be called in, be stuck, then wait for fifteen minutes.
We're in already and have indeed just been dosed and are waiting.
You know I came in here with the Borg for my first jab5 and was able to show it the bizarre scene. We are in an old church, with chairs laid out like we are awaiting a service. At front an enormous arch with a cross set into an alcove, on the stage a plethora of COVID vaccination paraphernalia, promotional banners, masks, antibacterial solutions, stamps, clocks. We all face this scene calmly waiting to be released. Having said that one young girl in distress has just been led to a corner to have her legs raised. Perhaps a link here to the relevant video.
Tik tok - 8 minutes to go.
Perhaps enough time to continue about this Doctor. Mother found him charming, we found him a nudge away from an SD man. The best conclusion is perhaps to see in him a sign of the times both in the sense that a medical doctor deemed this this type of political interrogation appropriate, but also in his mixed messages. He surely did not think of himself as a alt right nationalist but equally he had no inkling it seemed that his words sound exactly like such. Imagine the filter bubble on him.
That's time.
Back in the car now and in a calmer state to discuss the painting. It seems the stress of the vaccination situation led me to wander back into the bun fight mindset which I try to keep at bay, particularly when it comes to personal encounters. Those are very rare of course and perhaps that is why they light a fuse, I cannot imagine living in the UK through Brexit and the post truth era, one would need to become tough as a tendon. And grizzly.
So with Dr. Peculiar cut loose from our happy little boat, we float on and can tell you about the above study and of our return to the sensations. What can we say about our go between of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne? We have conceded the ridiculousness of the idea have we not? We go further, we mock ourselves for it, but we persist. It persists. Two approaches as opposed as Flaubert and Kerouac, as different as Glass and Jagger, as opposite as Chopin and Minogue,6 one might even bring forth endless musings over composition versus improvisation. Or can we even say that Van Gogh is sex and Cezanne meditation? Perhaps sex is too sociable, masturbation may be more like it for Van Gogh although that is too negative, in any case we have taken up the patch and have put it in to practice above.
When all is said and done, if personalities are removed from the equation, we are left with two practical approaches to the task of painting en plein air. We could even think of producing a 'pro's and con's list' to clear our thoughts if it weren't for the danger of over clarity. You see one reason to choose the impossible task is precisely to be somewhat lost in the middle, to exist in the unclear state and to work there. We ask our questions but do not really want to know the answer. We ask our questions but do not want clarity or definitive decisions. Is this dithering? A sign simply that more work must be done? To evolve and grow? To ripen? No. We have ripened. We have ripened into the state of Wretchedness. We have ripened into a state where we embrace indecision and impossibility. We do not nail any colours to the mast, we use blue tac7 so that when all is change, both inside and out, we can adapt. Is that not the more powerful position to be in? Does that not provide more creative possibility? They might say no, we do say yes.
Butter it! Let's simply refer readers to DS1 Work 15 in which we permitted ourselves the full account of the Cezanne method as we see it and leave it at that.
Six sessions on the one above, we reached neither too high or too low and you can see the result.8
Yours,
John
1 The works referred to here are: Still Life With Plaster Cupid, Portrait of the Artists Wife.
2 Cezanne developed a fear of physical contact following a childhood incident where he was kicked down a staircase by a fellow pupil at school.
3 An Irish word for news and gossip.
4. A local delivery service. It is not clear whether this refers to a job or an art related proposal.
5. See Message 28: Vaccination
6. Reference unclear, possibly Kylie?
7. A soft, rubbery adhesive substance.
8. Reaching neither 'too high or too low' is a reference to a quote attributed to Cezanne by Joachim Gasquet:
'You see, a motif is this...' (He put his hands together, drew them apart, the ten fingers open, then slowly, very slowly brought them together again, clasped them, squeezed them tightly, meshing them.) 'That's what one should try to achieve. If one hand is held too high or too low, it won't work. Not a single link should be too slack, leaving a hole through which the emotion, the light, the truth can escape. You must understand that I work on the whole canvas, on everything at once. With one impulse, with undivided faith, I approach all the scattered bits and pieces. Everything we see falls apart, vanishes, doesn't it? Nature is always the same, but nothing in her that appears to us, lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her eternity. What is there underneath? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Everything, you understand! So I bring together her wandering hands. I take something at right, something at left, here, there, everywhere, her tones, her colors, her nuances, I set them down, I bring them together. They form lines. They become objects, rocks, trees, without my planning. They take on volume, value. If these volumes, these values, correspond on my canvas, in my sensibility, to the planes, to the spots which I have, which are there before our eyes, then my canvas has brought its hands together. It does not waver. The hands have been joined neither too high nor too low. My canvas is true, compact, full. But if there is the slightest distraction, if I fail just a little bit, above all if I interpret too much one day, if today I am carried away by a theory which runs counter to that of yesterday, if I think while I paint, if I meddle, whoosh! everything goes to pieces."