Thank you very much for the brushes and canvas. I'll use them tomorrow as they arrived too late for my trip today. I'm getting low on paint. There will be enough for another three trips at the current rate of consumption and size and then I'll need more or I could turn to drawing if that is permitted, I'm not too clear on the guidelines. Can I do anything so long as its plein air?1 I can't imagine plein air conceptualism, having said that public art is plein air, anyway I said in my proposal that I wanted to start again from Van Gogh so it will be painting, drawing and writing. A funny thing about this is that I looked at a Picasso book yesterday at the library and it seemed very clear that he would be the wrong choice and it enforced my hunch of the appropriateness of Van Gogh for the current crisis and the TAS's rationale of breakage. I think it is mainly to do with his resistance to abstraction, something that seems highly desireable today since the financial crisis,2 and also the idea of returning to a point and an artist at the beginning of modernism just prior to the avant garde explosions of the twentieth century. (Do you know of Gillick’s play set in a Volvo factory just before everything turned into, as he says, 'a neoliberal farce’?)
Well, I’m committed but I can tell you that if someone proposed 'plein air painting' to me while I was in the reality insulated comfort of the university I would have thought them gone to seed but as it turns out now I’m warming to the idea. It is madness, clearly - just think what has become of us since Van Gogh - but I am willing to accept at least the argument for breakage and starting again from Van Gogh as a means to represent that breakage is interesting. This far I can go but any suggestion of a programme to replay modernism in some way, using whichever arguments you like, and I can think of a couple, is highly suspect (remember Altermodernism.3) But I would be interested if it was more about radicalising what we already do.4 To forge a new understanding of the commonplace so that a whole range of practices in society, human doing if you will, becomes radicalised and crucially to ensure that a political – anticapitalist – narrative permeates. It is stories we need and to hell with the contradictions! Stories that outlast the mainstream media’s version of events, which now more than ever before seems like utter lunacy. It's as if they really are talking with high voices5, the problem is that they are so adept in wiping the collective memory that it doesn't matter. Just think how austerity has been swollowed or rather, made to look like it has been. No! One thing we need from art now is stories, we must have lasting stories and continue to institute them. And what lasts better than a good oil? If this means opening up a new market then if you ask me its worth the trade off, this is after all just one little strand of what needs to be a great rope of ideas to pull us back from the brink.
And so to our humble persuit - today was another step in the direction; 'asking we walk' as the saying goes6. I returned to the grounds of Anthony house and came across a charming little stone cottage set beside a tree lined track that I presume heads off towards Wilcove. I had about an hour and a half as usual and this time I felt I was in the right frame of mind so there was less dithering and more focus. I tell you, this plein air painting is a remarkable activity, so absorbing and it feels like walking on a tightrope, one slip and it can all go. Although I did despair earlier, when I had just finished as I spoiled it somewhat but having brought it back to the yard I had some lunch and now I tell myself, 'you see its not as bad as you thought'.
I need some money for a mitre box, staple gun and timber.
Bests
John
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 The project is specifically about plein air painting but drawing is permitted.
2 This is lilely to refer to abstract financial instruments and speculation.
3 http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/altermodern
4 The sentiment appears to reflect Autonomous Marxist thinking which John made reference to in a late Open Council offering: Research Leaflet: Critique
5 This is a reference to a passage in Slavoj Zizek's First As Tradegy, Then As Farce: "In our societies, critical Leftists have hitherto only succeeded in soiling those in power, whereas the real point is to castrate them...But how can we do this? We should learn from the failures of twentieth century Leftist politics. The task is not to conduct the castration in a direct climatic confrontation, but to undermine those in power with patient ideologico-critical work, so that although they are still in power, one all of a sudden notices that the powers-that-be are afflicted with unnaturally high-pitched voices."
6 The slogan ‘Asking, We Walk’ is usually attributed to the Zapatistas, and has been taken up by countless activists and militant researchers since the first encuentro of Realidad in 1996.