De Kooning

I have been re-reading some of  David Sylvester's art criticism and one of the topics is Willem de Kooning. Looking also at Hess's 1959 paperback on the artist. The quality of the illustrations is very poor but then, so it seems to me is the quality of the work. When it was made, Excavation may well have seemed raw indeed. But the work that followed it-including the Woman series now seems distressingly inept. The photographs of the early stages of Woman I are the work of a truly clumsy painter who is trying to suppress the bland and mannered side of his art. That aspect of his work was commonly present when he dealt with figures . Artists make art out of chaos but there is a limit to what can be done and Woman I is  abandoned  rather than completed. 

Careen and Cohort

The meaning of words certainly does change. Careen seems to have lost its correct meaning for many people and to be synonymous with the idea of bouncing about. The  received meaning is connected with the idea of a ship leaning to one side in a dock or whilst sailing. But the casual meaning also has a long history.

Even the distinguished American writer James Lee Burke uses the word cohort to mean a companion-or possibly a subordinate companion rather than a military grouping.Thiss can be found in his Montana set novel "Bitterroot".  As if one person and a another were fellow horts. Co-horts indeed.

What a difference a tag makes

I put this image up on Flickr. It is a small sculpture I made out of various materials a few years ago. It is usual to add tags to the image so that people can find groups of similar themes. The last tag I thought of-in my innocence-was "fetish". I thought that the work might suggest some kind of cult object. You can imagine how astonished I was to see the number of times ''anthropologists'' clicked on the image. No doubt they were disappointed..... 

Dunstanburgh from the West

Taken from  the track on the western approach to the castle which passes through the marshy ground which protects the castle for much of its inland facing aspect. I cannot help thinking that the long narrow pool is so regular in  shape that it must have been excavated on purpose. It may have been a quarry and then become available for defence.

Current Exhibitions

Much is written about Bacon, Rothko and Hirst at the moment. It is hard to take the last two very seriously. I have some respect left for Bacon and there was a time when he was worth looking at and there seemed to be some integrity left. It now seems to me that Bacon became a "method" painter. By which I mean that he found a formula and stuck to it because it was the easy thing to do-and the quickest way to manufacture work. But just as a symphony would be unendurable if the direction was to play at ffff for several movements there are problems in painting where everything is blasted out .

As for Rothko. He was always a timid painter in terms of colour combinations. The early work is dreadfully weak and clumsy and the colour field represents an easy way out.  In a way I am not surprised that Howard Hodgkin is envious of Rothko. But  then Hodkin has so little to recommend him as a colourist. His work is certainly crass in comparison to the Indian miniatures he loves. I'm not suggesting  that he should have used their palette-though Rothko might have learned something colourwise from them. A tame critic or two was certainly helpful in Rothko's case. They were  able to excite themselves over very little. But the message has been conveyed and the art-loving public has been educated into seeing the numinous aspect of Rothko - at least this appears to be the message of the article in yesterday's Observer.

From the same newspaper I learn that Peter Conrad  has had a moment of conversion: he now sees Hirst as a "thinker". Is Mr Conrad really so impoverished?