6) Carbeile Wharf from Marine Drive
I spoke to Mr Huggins: “There’s none left! I'll put you on the list! Leave it with me!” This is all he says to me before disappearing into his office so I'll have to try and catch him again when I can. I know from experience however that there is never a good time. If you're lucky you can converse for a few seconds as he strides around the yard, but even then he's three meters ahead of you, looking back over his shoulder, and it’s not easy to catch him up. A huge barrel chested specimen of a man, the master of his domain1 and no mistake but I need at least to find out how much each type of unit is so that we might plan for it. To have a place to work is now essential - I have half a dozen still life’s up my sleeve and with the forecast rain I would be better off working on those.
Well, contrary to the forecast it has been baking sun the last few days and I have made the most of it with a size 20 view from Marine Drive looking back towards the yard, and for the first time I spent two sessions on the painting. The first day was a near write off due to spending so much time entertaining the curiosity of an endless conveyor belt of passersby, who, it seemed, were very pleasantly taken with the sight of a painter on the green.
The second day I pressed ahead; a swirling grass foreground divides the composition from low left to high right to a set of three pines in varied green. Violet tones for the brush of the bank leading into the yard where Graceful and Resonova are suggested with a few strokes, and beyond, sparse treatment for the military wives quarters and town houses on the hill. The Sky gradients from pale to deep blue with a band of cloud cover pushing in from the west. On the whole a view, but not yet the language of motif to represent it that I'm looking for, but there is hope for it yet. The grass has the hint of autonomous motive but no more than that, its a tricky thing let me tell you.
I can't tell you how friendly people were to me but it was more than that, they were affectionate, as if they were somehow rooting for me? They may well have simply felt sorry for me, I suppose I looked a little haggard and beat stood there. But look here, living at the boatyard you can quite forget yourself, especially as it is possible to remain there for days on end and it's only when encountering other people outside that one realises that one is covered in oil and kerosene. Poor Ann, a stout Liverpudlian woman who lives just aft from us, she walked past me earlier on the north side of Marine Drive and when I waved at her she looked mortified. But no, I think the reactions I experienced were genuine (including Ann’s) and what’s more so many people told me how they used to paint and how they loved it and wished they could get back into it. One women even said ‘it looks like you’ve got a Van Gogh thing happening’, quite right I thought and I told her about the Torpoint Art Service project and outlined our idea of breaking off and starting again from Van Gogh. She was very excited and gave me her email address and begged me to give her notice of any future exhibition. Then we talked about Vincent for a long time and I recommended the Naifeh and Smith’s biography.
Let me say that people seem to have a tremendous amount of goodwill in their hearts for plein air painting and this is partly what led me to apply for the TAS in the first place; to try for once to do something in a medium that is popular and accessible. Why resist that? This isn’t 1920's avant-garde Paris after all, and the pre financial crisis context with all that talk of the creative industries, the Florida inspired regeneration policies2 and when radical art seemed to reinforce the neoliberal frenzy at every turn,3 well, that all seems like a dream - now we're living in post apocalyptic austerity, clean slate time (as far as art goes). We have to create a new world as the last one has ended, the third crisis as old Holmes would have it.4 Now is a time of great opportunity and this humble effort of ours in Torpoint is in that spirit but we must reach out to a broad audience, no tongue poking at the ‘imbecile public’5 which in any case now has become the 99%.6 But how can we proceed to make radical art in a way wich does not repeat creation/cooptation cycles of the past? Well, it is simply not possible to control that, and I no longer believe that an answer can be found in the form of a work alone, but we can control how tightly we weave a political narrative into our work. So instead of the impulse to charge forward, why not frame our new doing to a conceptual and aesthetic framework from the past? Let us travel back to the beginning to a time set before the major crisis of the 20th century. 'All that is solid melts into thin air'7...well this time let us be the ones holding the hairdryer.
Thanks for the mitre box and gun8 - i'm expecting the timber this afternoon. Also Kate has sent me a an offer to work. She has some research moneys to spend and she needs a feminist self institution but if I take this on will it affect my allowance?9
.......................................Yours,
....................................................John
1 It has been suggested that the phrase 'master of his domain' is a reference to an American situation comedy called Seinfeld but it is unlikely as the episode in which the phrase appears has no obvious link to anything John is discussing.
2 Richard Florida, a discredited urban theorist whose book "The Rise of the Creative Class" examines creativity and its effects on economic development. Florida's work has been instrumental for policy makers in the UK during the new Labour era which saw a nationwide program of urban regeneration of towns and cities. Florida's work routinely used by governments and property developers around the world as justification for mass gentrification.
3 John researched this theme extensively during his role as primary instituter at the Open Council. This passage was taken from a report entitled Open Council: Story Of An Improvisation Machine and appears in the Context Report Section 1 Introduction:
"The history of artistic critique is well established: the modernist avant-garde critique of bourgeoisie ideology, the post-war critique of capitalist consumer spectacle, and the post-modern critique of disciplinarity and the deconstruction of the unified subject resulting in unlimited displays of pluralism, boundary crossing and inter-disciplinarity. Today, while we are still in the grip of postmodernism, it is argued that the post-modern artistic critique has been assimilated into the system of late capitalism and becomes indistinguishable from neo-liberal ideology which promotes the same values of diversity, difference and flexibility in the context of globalisation (Hardt & Negri, 2000, p. 151; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Holmes, 2004, p. 24; Stallabrass, 2004, p. 78). This sense of complicity inevitably has led artists to develop different practices, strategies and tactics, often outside of the art context, that might have the possibility to intervene critically in the globalised world but at every turn they are exposed for unwittingly reinforcing the dominant ideology. Artists working with a relational aesthetic (Bourriaud, 2002), creating temporary community formations in exhibition, to heal a broken social bond, are accused of mirroring the "service economy‟, (Holmes, 2009; Bishop, 2004), artists engaging in new technology are accused of spearheading the new market standards of the "knowledge economy‟ (Heise & Jakobsen, 2001), socially engaged projects that seek to empower marginalized communities risk having their work presented as the outreach work of the sponsoring institution (Foster, 1996), and artists rejecting the gallery/museum space in favour of "site specific‟ works in "public space‟ are firstly criticised for believing in the existence of an authentic space outside of the reach of the institution (Kwon, 2004), and secondly warned that such artistic gestures in the city, once the radical practice of the Situationists, have been accounted for by the flexibility of the market in the guise of the "experience economy‟ (Vishmidt, 2007)."
4 See Brian Holmes Three Crisis Seminar.
5 Possibly a reference Jacques Ranciere discussing critique and recuperation ad infinitum in The Emancipated Spectator (p. 48): "Forty years ago, critical science made us laugh at the imbeciles who took images for realities and let them be seduced by their hidden messages. In the interim, the "imbeciles‟ have been educated in the art of recognizing the reality behind appearances and the messages concealed in images. And now, naturally enough, recycled critical science makes us smile at the imbeciles who still think such things as concealed messages in images and a reality distinct from appearances exists. The machine can work in this way until the end of time, capitalizing on the critique that unveils the impotence of the critique that unveils the impotence of the imbeciles."
6 The rallying cry of the Occupy Movement "We Are The 99%". The phrase refers directly to the concentration of income and wealth among the top earning 1%. In comparing the term with imbecile public john is perhaps suggesting that the 99% should be understood as the imagined public to which radical art is aimed.
7 Quote from Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. The phrase 'All that is solid melts into thin air' refers to the destructive effectis of capitalist modernization.
8 Staple gun
9 Dr Kate Maclean works at Birkbeck University, London. John collaborated with her on the Feminist Bureau Of Investigation project. The Torpoint Art Service allowed John to work on the project providing it was for less than 16 hours per week.