Lessons from Merz

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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8 April

On my fourth visit to the Kurt Schwitters exhibition at Tate Britain (Schwitters in Britain), I shall probably conclude having looked at everything, and might even manage some time with the ‘Kurt-inspired’ installations by Laure Prouvost and Adam Chodzko.

Four visits ? Yes, because, unlike those of the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at (Tate) Modern (Lichtenstein : A Retrospective) these works, in my experience, need time to be appreciated, and also space. As a Member of Tate, I have my admission free and at will, without the need for a ticket, and I can accordingly pace my viewing. (With the Arshile Gorky exhibition at Modern, I misjudged a little, and needed to travel down for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of its closing weekend.)

What I have learnt (so far) is :

(1) One can have no appreciation of the pieces in Room 5 (Hand-held sculptures) from photographic images (I have seen such)

(2) In fact, without having them endlessly rotate on a turntable (not least because some are fragile, or, maybe, unstable), I believe that filming some of the works revolving would have benefited the typical visitor’s appreciation of, for example, Chicken and Egg, Egg and Chicken, Untitled (The All-Embracing Sculpture) and Speed (all dates to come)

(3) There are various reasons, some to do with the effect of shadow on Schwitters’ constructions (both on canvas and paper, and these free-standing ones), and others to the fact that he has, for example, vividly painted planes of Chicken and Egg, Egg and Chicken that are not – almost necessarily with a three-dimensional object (although there is more to it than that) – visible at all times

(4) In fact, the moving image as an interpretive element is under-represented in the show (whereas the installations both use film) – we do not, I assume, have footage of Schwitters reciting the Ursonate or any other of his poems, stories, etc., which is why we have the well-known three-by-three grid of photographs of him performing the former (plus audio)

(5) I have not yet done more than pass through Prouvost and Chodzko’s parts of the exhibition, but it does beg the question why their work, even if it is a response to his, is part of the show about Schwitters – how interesting are commissions from 2011, as against, say, some reactions in artwork that are contemporaneous to his time in Britain (seven years, after all), or even reporting Hirst’s inspiration to go to art college because of Schwitters’ collages ?

(6) What we do have, which I suggest is more of archive interest, are the photographs of the Merz Barn that were taken in situ by the team led by Richard Hamilton, and we have an almost excessively full chronology* of the failure to save the remains of the Merzbau, and of the near-failure to preserve the Merz Barn, both before and after the Hamiltonian survey

(7) I criticize the inclusion of a film-loop of those photos for several reasons : (a) they include rulers whose scale is never made explicit, (b) it is also not clear what the – often enough – poor-quality images (usually too dark) depict, because there is no over-arching shot of that wall of the Merz Barn, except in the course of the loop (which, of course, one cannot consult), and (c) a large-scale quality image of the wall as it can now be seen in Newcastle-upon-Tyne would show far more (or one could even have had a touch-sensitive one that would project a choice of images, being various levels of close-up or one of the ones from the survey)

(8) There are two large plaster pieces (a little like columns, as displayed, but resembling shapely newel-posts, or legs), which, I understand, were found in the Merz Barn, and which are ‘displayed’ in oblong Perspex boxes, placed against the wall, so that one side is invisible – unlike the four Perspex cubes that contain the hand-held sculptures, one cannot even walk all around them, and so film of them being either rotated or circled would give more sense of their curves, their construction, and their continuity with the smaller pieces

(9) But enough of all these observations for how the Schwitters show could have been better or different, because so many visitors (typically for a gallery) are doing themselves no favours by appreciating the works on canvas, wood, cardboard or paper without standing back from them

For I believe that Schwitters used the bus-tickets, say, or newspaper clippings, pieces of packaging, corrugated card or paper, gauze or net purely for their visual effect – if, after we have seen a shape mutedly through a piece of net, we will not see it close to, and we will not see the composition by knowing that that part of it is paper, that part oil-paint on the paper, that part a piece of stone adhered to the surface

(10) The exhibition contains some examples of his use of pointillist marks in landscape and abstract work, but, again, we do not get the best from Seurat by being so close that we see what the painting is made of, but not how the technique is meant to work and be viewed – same with painters such as Sisley or Pissarro

(11) As to the materials that Schwitters used that derive from reproductions of works in national collections, there are some cases (Room 3 contains some) where one is quite clearly meant to see that he is transforming or subverting a representation of an identifiable original, which is entirely consistent with the assertion that he made in 1919 :

The word Merz denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes, and technically the principle of equal evaluation of the individual materials


(12) Schwitters goes on to make his meaning quite plain – and I like it that he talks, along with paint, about things as if there is a harmonious democratization :

A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint


(13) For this reason, I reject the curatorial interpretation put on his use of a copy of G. F. Watt’s Hope in c. 63 old picture 1946 :

The inclusion of an advertisement for Dr Scholl’s Foot Comfort Service brings the lofty symbolism of the original painting, positioned upside-down and overlaid with scraps of paper so that it is barely recognizable, down to earth


Well, if Watt’s painting is inverted and so overlaid maybe it is not meant to be recognizable, and could there, therefore, not be any ‘bringing down’ except in the recognition of a student of art history ? As to the advert, I see no greater significance in the wording than in that of many a scrap used in other collages (‘Merz’ itself is an appropriated fragment, after all) :

The person who looks at a bus-ticket in one and ponders its provenance might as well be in London Transport Museum as the Tate, because I believe that Schwitters’ eye is good, a self-reinforcing belief, because I stand back from his paintings, find a harmony in them, and that, if I put my thumb up to remove a detail, the painting is no longer balanced – it is interesting to get close and see how he achieved it, but just doing so is mistaking means and end


All in all, although some things could have been done differently, I am glad to have had this exhibition to visit, and, when I am not hearing inane comments on Schwitters or his art from other visitors (which makes me run a mile), or avoiding their proceeding to a painting that had looked ‘free’, or even their deciding to stand in my way, I can fondly hope that people have the chance to get to know his work better.

Not everything works as effectively as the select few that really do sing, but almost all have something to say, and it is a joy to become aware of his works of portraiture, landscape, and – in the flesh – sculpture.

Viva Kurt !


End-notes

* I refuse to say ‘time-line’.


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What does the word 'stigma' tell anyone ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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25 July

These are some further thoughts about what meaningful message, if any, is given to the public by talking about the stigma of mental ill-health*.


I suspect little more (and who judges a book by its cover - don't we all?) than titles of texts such as, being quite random, The Tao of Pooh, The Road to Wigan Pier, The Dancing Wu Li Masters or Lady Windermere's Fan.

Yes, they identify something, and not always exclusively: for example, film convention is to write Psycho (1960), not least as it was re-made**.

Do titles / names do any more than identify***? Only, I feel, if they are apt, rather than arbitrary (remember the times when no one knew what counselling was, and everyone had to explain that they weren't seeing a counsellor to get advice?): as my footnote says, the titles that Breton gave to Gorky's paintings seem apt, as does The Canterbury Tales.


Contrast that with The Merchant of Venice, because many people (we have probably all still heard of Shylock) would be pressed to say who the person is to whom the title relates. Do we want that sort of confusion, if we are talking about the very real effects that other people's attitudes (not always conscious) have on almost every detail of the lives of people with an experience of mental ill-health?

For those attitudes get translated into a behaviour with as many points on it as most spectra, from which, maybe:

* funny looks

* crossing the road to avoid

* suddenly halting a lively conversation

* name-calling

* telling stories to councils, the Department for Work and Pensions, social services, TV Licensing, the RSPCA, etc.

* excrement on the car / through the door / over the fence

* damage to property, pets, plants, etc.

* putting burning paper through the door

* personal physical attack

* arson (burning paper through the door that 'works')

* murder (where death is not the result of the arson)


That's for the home-life of that person - home, or feeling that one has one, being much of what is left. Since the chances are that, if he or she had a job, an enforced hospital stay led to another spectrum of behaviours, ending in dismissal or resignation. (Home, that is, if an arsonist - or a violent partner - left any home remaining, other than the streets.)


A grim picture? Not an exaggerated one, though, because all of these things do happen, and one thing can lead to another - after all, who is an expert in responding non-provocatively to that sort of attack on who one is and what one has?

No worse considering it than the fact that the mental-health community shudders every time some violent or fatal crime is associated with the perpetrator's mental ill-health, because a backlash is feared. I come back to that phrase:

Who one is and what one has


That is what we want to protect****:

Who one is can so easily and so subtly be under attack, a stealthy attrition that is upon one before one is aware of it, just as is what one has, mentally or, in physical / emotional terms, the little that one calls a home, family, or friends, all of which have a tendency to slip away, if they did not already at whatever breakdown is (the Peer Support Workers call it psychiatric challenge).

Stopping a world continuing to exist where these things happen and are casually - or callously - taken for granted is what combating stigma should work for:

The verbs to traumatize and to stigmatize (both from Greek, so they have a similar ring) are closer than we realize, and using the word 'stigma' - to me - says not nearly as much.


We are stigmatizing people for things that they did not choose to happen. They are not weak, they do not deserve it - if it meant anything to our society any more to say it, we would know that There (but for the grace of God) go I.

This is the significance of talking about one in four people - not that one gets into a four where there already 'a mad person', so that one is magically safe, but that the former slogan of The National Lottery applies: it's not you yet, but how do you know that it won't be?

We must not traumatize people further for what has already left them traumatized - if we were human beings in any real sense, we would stay with them while they seek to tell their stories, weep with them over what has happened already, and help them to heal, and to feel healed, not judged, criticized, abused, spat out and scapegoated.


And, above all, we would burn that stupid slogan out of our hearts, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.



End-notes

* Or whatever one's preferred term, as, sadly (in a way), there is no agreement even on that: e.g. mental distress (Mind), mental health difficulty (One in Four magazine), mental illness (NHS), etc., etc.

** Re-made, apparently, unhelpfully faithfully, according to one person who could not see the point of re-enacting the old screenplay.

*** Hesitating to dilate on what is added (or lost) when a visual artist calls every work Untitled, although I will recount how a symbiosis occurred between a painter and a poet:

André Breton, spokesman for the Surrealist movement and a poet and novelist, came to know Arshile Gorky and his works. The two men had a good relationship, such that Breton wrote about and gave rise to titles of many of Gorky's later works

With a good (i.e. apt) title (like The Canterbury Tales), can it be separated from the work, because it is now part of it (and of its meaning)?


**** Even if the dismissive (and damning) ways of some consultant psychiatrists can make the job harder, right at the outset, of that person believing that he or she will not always be like this, always need medication, never get back to work, because it is too stressful.


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Gerhard Richter: Painting - less painting, than trying not to be disrupted painting

This is a Festival review of Gerhard Richter : Painting (2011)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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7 October

This is a Festival review of Gerhard Richter : Painting (2011)

* Contains spoilers *

Arshile Gorky’s wife reported, when he was still working in his New York studio, that she would see a canvas in one state, and, by the time that she awoke, it had been worked upon so much that it was largely unrecognizable. There are elements of this in what Gerhard Richter seeks to achieve in spite of the presence of those filming him at work, but that is the territory of this kind of work, and, really, it ought not to be too surprising (to which I shall return later).

Rather than wondering, rather pointlessly, whether Gorky would have allowed director Corinna Belz in when he was working, I can only profess admiration for Richter that, despite the fact that it was putting him off, he did not close down the access. That said, whether he would have welcomed – or, if given the choice, approved of – the temporal juxtaposition of how what he was working on looked at different moments, I do not know.

What I do know is that he loads the squeegee with paint, and then has to say that what he was about to do cannot be done then, because it will not succeed. Whatever Richter may ‘really’ be like, he gave the impression on camera of being a sensitive man, and he seemed unnerved that he had started preparing for something that was not possible, and which, one would like to think, he might not have done, if he had felt at ease. He did not, not when trying to work on his canvases.

Indeed, following on from that, if we invest an artist and his or her work with worth, then we have to leave him or her free to decide when a work is finished, and what is effective and what is not. And yet I am imagining that the moment when he white-washes over a grey composition may have left some who watched the film wishing that he had left it untouched: I can understand that, but I take the different view – that he created it, and he must be satisfied with it, if it is to bear his name.

His assistants, his wife, recognize the knife-edge on which the creative process is balanced at this stage, and say that, if they were to comment that they think that something is right as it stands, what they have said would be more likely to cause Richter to re-work it. Not out of perversity, I fully believe, but because, as the camera and crew do, the remark would interrupt and subvert the process.

Unlike artists who have their studios, and would, throughout history, delegate tasks to assistants, Richter’s was shown getting the paint ready, but the artist himself was even cleaning off his materials at the end of the session. He was, as he several times expressed in response to questioning (some of which was better and more artistically minded than other parts of it), clearly finding his way with the works, and we were told about how their current state had to stand up (as if to scrutiny, scrutiny of a most honest kind – and Richter believes in truth in painting) for several days: white-washing over was not something over which those in his entourage could regularly afford to be regretful.

As I say, the creation is the artist’s, and he or she is the one to find a way ahead. In the case, for example, of Joan Miró, he had the luxury of being able to re-work canvases decades later that were still in his possession, whereas the Tate refused, I think, Francis Bacon, access to some of his, because it did not want them – as it owned them – any different from how they were, and knew that that would be the result otherwise.

One observation, amongst many intelligent things that Richter said about his work (and it was also fascinating to see him about the business not only of planning out exhibition spaces in 1:50 scale, but to hear him pleading with photographers at the opening of a show who required just one more pose that they had so many shots already), was that a painting makes an assertion that does not bear much company: in the context of having to hang several pieces on each wall, and plan it all out, that seemed just as much a challenge as in the studio, with canvases making differing assertions in different ways about how they should work.

So the supremacy of each work’s voice, its statement, and, I would say, for the painter to decide what it is to say and when it is saying it. Then, for Richter, what he said that he valued was people adopting the attitude of those attending a gallery in New York, who would more freely, more honestly, say that they liked this group of paintings, but that the grey compositions were terrible. The point that he was making is he does not feel the polite comment that something is ‘interesting’, to which he is usually exposed, is that kind of genuine response.

As for me, I’m looking forward to spending time at the new exhibition at Tate Modern – and maybe to watching this film again there during the time that it is on.


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