Derrida, deconstruction, and discontent

Sometimes literary theory just really pisses me off. I love pure philosophy and cultural theory is often intriguing, but the thought of applying Marxism or feminism or some other "ism" to historical events or literary texts (as so often the fashion in academic circles these days) makes me want to slit my wrists. Sure, I can see why it might be interesting to look at the Oedipus myth in conjunction with Freud's oeuvre, but a Freudian reading of Aeschylus (to take but one example) completely baffles.

I've been trying to read Derrida's Limited Inc, but it's slow going. Partly because I feel I need a few uninterrupted hours to blitz through the essays in one go, but also because I feel my brain boiling over with, not quite rage, but certainly annoyance.  Admittedly, it's not entirely Jacky D's fault for I find Speech Act Theory on the whole completely ludicrous. How much more ridiculous, then, am I bound to find a deconstructive (destructive?) reaction to an underwhelming theory.  Having said that, I feel I ought to finish reading the thing and do quite a lot of thinking before I go mad-dog rabid. After these messages...

A far more instructive and stimulating experience was to be found at last night's Rip it Up lecture, part of a series at London Met organised by my old boss and now Evening Standard architecture critic, Kieran Long.  Paul Domela, the programme director of the Liverpool Biennial, gave the lecture, which focused on the role of public art in urban regeneration and community development in Liverpool and beyond.  I've never actually been to Liverpool so I found the talk interesting, not only for what Paul had to say about public art, but also for what he had to say about the nature and history of the city itself.

It's difficult to get a good grasp of the situation simply from one brief lecture but I was completely taken aback by photographs of residential streets with every single house boarded up, and big department stores in the city centre left empty and abandoned.  Paul talked us through a variety of projects - from the Carins Street market started by local residents to Ron Haselden's wonderful work creating neon lights out of local schoolchildren's drawings - all of which are grounded in ideas of community engagement and the beautification of depressed and dilapidated areas.

As an artist, a curator, and a critic, I find these projects inspiring and exciting but in the Q and A, Professor Robert Mull, head of the faculty of Architecture at London Met, asked a provocative question that really got me thinking.  His question to Paul was that, given the history of civil disturbance in the city (particularly the Toxteth riots), wasn't it possible to offer a reading of these pleasant, feel-good community arts projects as a kind of social and cultural lobotomy: art in place of political action.  I don't entirely agree with his assessment, given that the nature, even definition, of community is so ephemeral and changeable.  I'm also rather committed to the idea of art as a force for good, for positive social change.  But I'd never really thought about art as a substitute for active political action, as if projects that bettered urban areas were a kind of passive non-interaction when contrasted with more direct and active participation of strikes, riots, or protests.  Typically, when I'm inclined to make such juxtapositions it's in a Chomsky-esque fashion: sport or television as a substitute for direct political engagement.  But I suppose that's what makes a great talk so important - it forces you to check your prejudices and assumptions, to reassess previously held beliefs. 

If you have any interest in architecture or urbanism or just in thinking a little bit differently about the cities we live in, do make an effort to attend. Next week's lecture is about Belfast and promises to be just as engrossing, engaging, and essential.

The series continues until 13 January, every Thursday at 6.30pm.

London Metropolitan University School of Architecture and Spatial Design

Spring House

40-44 Holloway Road

London N7 8JL

Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals

Canaletto's The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729. © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (56.2).

Monday evening as I strolled up to the National Gallery on my way to view the recently opened exhibition, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals, I was struck by a rather amusing coincidence.

Work is being done to the front façade of the National Gallery and a wrap around the scaffolding sees a Credit Suisse-sponsored scene that imagines Trafalgar Square as a Venetian lagoon.  "Canaletto Comes to London" it proudly proclaims, but the funny thing is that only a few weeks ago the art world was up in arms about similarly sponsored billboards in La Serinissima herself.



Venice's famous Ponte dei Sospiri (a name coined by Byron who romantically suggested that prisoners being led from the interrogation rooms on one side of the bridge to the prison cells in the Doge's Palace on the other side, would sigh at their last sight of the beautiful city while making the crossing) has of late been covered in huge ads for Coke, Chanel, and Bulgari.  In a city like Venice, always fighting a battle between the built environment and, well, the environment, such ads have been common sources of raising restoration funds.  But the current slew of advertisements, such as those surrounding the Bridge of Sighs, are different: they aren't about the city, but the brand footing the bill.  At least with the old ads, one might come to some idea of what the original building looked like.  Not only does the Bulgari ad completely obscure the Bridge, but it succeeds in enfolding the architecture of the city into a kind of gruesome ad campaign. 

 

Image by Davers

Having said all this, I found the National Gallery's ad particularly amusing because it highlights the hypocrisy of the gang of talking museum heads who signed an open letter to Giorgio Orsoni, the Mayor of Venice, and published it in the Art Newspaper.  Given that their museums and exhibitions are funded by BP, Ernst & Young, Credit Suisse, etcetera, on what grounds, I wonder, do the museum heads protest Orsoni’s decision.  Just because his corporate advertisers get more visual impact for their buck doesn’t mean we aren’t dealing with the application of precisely the same principles.  Given the National Gallery's Venice-themed wrap-around (which admittedly isn't half as bad as the ads on the Bridge of Sighs), perhaps it's unsurprising that Nicholas Penny has opted out of the open letter.  To be clear, it’s not that I’m all in favour of selling off beloved city landmarks or national art exhibitions to the highest corporate bidder.  Simply that the hypocrisy of museum directors with their pleading open letter on the one hand, but only too happy to accept cash from BP et al (as long as the logo placement is subtle) on the other hand, drives me bonkers. 

As for the Canaletto show, it's surprisingly good, and I say surprisingly as someone who adores both Venice and Canaletto.  I tend to find the exhibitions at London's major museums - especially the Tate “disaster-zone” Modern - utterly pointless and so attend with suitably lowered expectations.  Venice is one of the most visited cities in the world, so its regular appearance as the subject of blockbuster exhibitions is no surprise: it brings in the big bucks.  But despite its overwhelming popularity and resulting theme-park trappings, Venice has a subtlety only to be found once one diverts from the Grand Canal.  Amusingly, I know a lot of people who don’t like Venice but I maintain that they either haven’t been with me or they haven’t been in the off season.  Possibly both.  Venice is incredibly beautiful, picturesque to the point of being grotesque, but it won’t give you anything for free.  You have to go exploring, get lost, go for a swim, get off the Rialto and into Cannaregio. 

It amuses me to think that in many ways, twenty-first century Venetian tourists are Canaletto’s heirs: making view pictures with their Minoltas and Canons instead of hog-hair brushes.  The purpose is one in the same: wealthy tourists want a memento to remind them of their visit to this most beautiful city.  In the eighteenth century, one might have bought Canaletto’s Entrance to the Grand Canal: Looking East (1744), whereas now one can snap a quick pic of the same scene on the Number 1 vaporetto chugging down the Canal.  Just because the former is part of the Queen’s collection of art doesn’t mean that the self-styled snap is any less precious...

Canaletto. The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute, 1744. © 2010, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

So, Canaletto’s paintings are beautiful – Venice at her loveliest, most golden, most unearthly – and the Grand Tourists head home with proof of the pudding, but what’s actually rather refreshing, even challenging, about the curation of this show is that it doesn’t rest on such an unexamined approach.  In fact, the exhibition title gives it away – the star of this show isn’t Canaletto, but Venice – and the comparison of Canaletto with his nephew and protégée, Bellotto, as well as later view painter, Guardi, provides an illuminating juxtaposition to the differing approaches of the veduti painters.  It’s tempting to use a Goldilocks analogy when considering the three: Bellotto too cold; Guardi too hot; Canaletto just right, but that hardly does justice to the subtleties of their styles.  Canaletto’s later works are the easiest to take in, the most obviously beautiful, but such unchallenging beauty quickly wears thin.  The Goldilocks analogy is particularly apt in the Bellotto room: one fascinating pairing has another of Canaletto’s scenes depicting the entrance to the Grand Canal sandwiched by two different attempts by Bellotto to paint the same scene.  Of course, it’s impossible to tell whether Bellotto was making a concerted effort to distance himself from his uncle’s technique – quite likely – but neither painting has the harmony or the gorgeous diffused light of Canaletto.  One attempt is too harsh, the other is too soft and Canaletto’s sits in between and sings.

But despite the beauty of Canaletto’s works, Guardi steals the show – while his images display all the hallmarks of view painting, his work feels less constrained by the demands of the genre or the whims of tourists: the lighting is stronger, less diffused and tonally there are more greys and browns, instead of the jewel tones omnipresent in Canaletto.  A few of Guardi’s pieces look as if finished with India ink: thick, swift, black liquid brush strokes define window frames and architraves, where Canaletto is softer and more forgiving. 

Guardi. The Lagoon with the Torre di Malghera, around 1770–80. © The National Gallery, London

Guardi. The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge from the South, about 1780. © Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Widener Collection. 

There’s something compelling and refreshing about the wild looseness of Guardi’s paintings after Canaletto’s over-idealised, disneyesque portraits of La Serinissima at her most clichéd.  Though the city may be affectionately referred to as eternally serene on account of those familiar, sweeping vistas, Venice's history is one of turbulence and violence, and for all its fairy-tale beauty Canaletto’s work serves as a reminder that at the end of the day, in the world of art at least, the interests of money reign supreme.

found:

one hilarious note.  made even more amusing by the fact that i recently penned a parallel missive.  i wasn't apologising for criticising bad bread, per se, but given that i was quite intoxicated, the tone of both notes is laughably similar...

note to self: write no notes when boozy.

visual inspiration: griffith observatory

photos by: Floyd B. Bariscale, seany, Goodnight London, and prayitno

While Los Angeles certainly doesn’t hit my city sweet spot, it does have its own peculiar charm.  It’s one of the most superficial cities I’ve ever lived in, yet it has a colourful and interesting history of cultural philanthropy.  LA’s museums might not be as plentiful or as show stopping as her New York City counterparts, and yet, for all the sky-scraping towers in Manhattan, there’s no place quite so wonderful for star gazing as LA’s Griffith Observatory.

As a child, I found everything about the Observatory completely spellbinding: the long, winding drive up the hill; the art-deco curve of the central rotunda; the Foucault’s pendulum swinging underneath; Hugo Ballin’s wall murals depicting the history of astronomy; and especially, the view over the city at night. 

But I think the thing that captivated me then, as now, was the set apartness of the place; the feeling that when you finally arrived at the top of the hill you weren't in LA anymore.  That once you passed through the Observatory's doors you weren't just entering a building, but another world.  As a child, you never felt that this alchemy resulted from the technical capabilities of the telescopes or the transporting trickery of the planetarium, but that the place itself was somehow closer to the Milky Way. Who cared about the celebrities on Sunset Boulevard when the glitter at Griffith was so much more spectacular.  And despite the fact that I’ve visited rather a lot of beautiful buildings since my first trip, this sense of mystery and otherness has remained. I find the Observatory just as beautiful now as I did then.

a sleepless night

This piece first appeared in The Architectural Review.

Having grown up in a sprawling American metropolis, for me the best feature of many European cities is their easy navigability.  Paris is a particularly wonderful city in which to stroll and for one evening every year, during the Nuit Blanche festival, this quality is exploited and the city gets a dressing up with installations and events, glittering jewels on the wrists of a beautiful woman.  Nuit Blanche is one night when the city is entirely given over to the pleasures of wandering and of discovering.

Nuit Blanche is an idiomatic French phrase that literally means ‘white night’.  It’s often used to express the passing of a sleepless night, whether because of an uncomfortable mattress or one too many turns on the dance floor.  In the case of the first Saturday evening in October, Nuit Blanche refers to the all-night arts festival established by the forward-thinking Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, in 2002. Delanoë has done much to bolster Paris’ cultural life: he is also responsible for the annual Paris Plage and the Vélib cycle hire scheme, both much loved by Parisians.

As for Nuit Blanche itself, every year this 12-hour festival – from 7pm to 7am – takes on a different theme.  This year saw less a theme, more a concentration around certain geographical hubs – Centre, West, East – to allow visitors more opportunities for ambling.

For its ninth year, Nuit Blanche was curated Martin Bethenod, director of Venice’s Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana.  The backbone of the programme consisted of 40 invited artists, but like any good arts festival, a fringe programme has also sprung up and many artists and galleries use the exposure to organise their own installations throughout the city.

Given that the festival takes place during the hours of darkness, it is hardly surprising that so many of the installations experiment with light.  Of these, the most effective was Thierry Dreyfus' deceptively simple light installation inside the Notre-Dame de Paris.  Dreyfus’ piece, Offrez Moi Votre Silence, was remarkable for its ability to force a new reading of a familiar building.  Switching off all city lights around the church’s exterior, Dreyfus installed a series of internal floodlights which dimmed and brightened in a gentle rhythm, like a lung breathing inside the Notre-Dame.  When viewed from outside, the church was dark save for the glowing stained glass windows.

Perhaps Paris’ most famous lighting designer, Drefus made an eloquent comment in a 2005 New York Times interview which coincided with the reopening of the Grand Palais: ‘What is the sense of lighting buildings at night to show what you see during the day? You have to bring another dream.’  The installation is testament to the strength of Dreyfus’ vision.  On this evening the Notre-Dame feels different: less like a space for sacred worship, more a place to appreciate the power of secular creation.  Dreyfus’ breathing light lungs have transformed the overwhelming grandeur of the church into a space that feels far more unified, serene, and familiar.  Shock and awe has been replaced by feelings of profound calm and composure: it’s a remarkable transformation.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, of recent birds-in-the-Barbican fame, exhibited an older project, Harmonichaos from 2000.  One of the perks of Nuit Blanche is that you get to snoop around buildings not regularly open to the public.  Boursier-Mougenot’s comically-sinister, harmonica-playing hoovers are installed in a salon in the beautiful Hôtel de Lauzun, on the banks of the Seine.  A private townhouse, the Hôtel was constructed during the reign of Louis XIV and its ornate and rich interiors have seen hardly a change in the following centuries.  The sumptuous room where Boursier-Mougenot's hoovers are displayed serves as a delicious foil to the late-80s aesthetic of the old hoovers, and the weezing whine of the harmonicas creates an atonal, modernist kind of symphony. 

Respite from the demands of this sleepless night were provided by Louidgi Beltrame’s enlightening film about Gunkanjima, screened in the École Nationale Supérieure D'Architecture in Belleville, an area increasingly known for its community of up-and-coming artists in eastern Paris.  At 5am, Beltrame’s hypnotic film of Gunkanjima’s ruined buildings was most welcome.  In all honesty, it’s difficult to judge the accuracy of my response to the film given the circumstances, but it was exactly what was needed at the time: slow-moving images of a dystopian-Disney fantasy, a coal-mining island long since abandoned.  Off the coast of Nagasaki, the island was populated by workers from 1887 to 1974 and then left to crumble thereafter.  Beltrame’s camera makes no ideological or moral statement; it only shows what’s left of this bizarre island, which resembles the ghostly remains of a depressing work camp.  The pull of the place is undeniable and Beltrame has done a great service simply in bringing it to light.

Though not as successful as it might have been given that the space was too small and that a gaggle of teenagers seemed to have used it as a bed for the night, Fayçal Baghriche's piece, Snooze, brought Nuit Blanche to its end.  A pitch-black room in the Hôtel d’Albret was filled with 300 alarm clocks resting on shelves lining one wall.  The clocks ticked away all throughout the evening, until at precisely 7am, the alarms all went off in (near) unison.  While the noise of the clocks wasn’t quite as deafening as I expected, the idea of trying to arrive on time for an alarm clock to go off is playful and amusing.  As is the notion of the alarm clock as an Alice-in-Wonderland-type symbol: 300 alarms go off and one turns from night-time dreamer back into day-time doer. 

Frieze!

Sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion that London is run by an underground group of art-loving, booze-hound, film-going foody types given that last week saw Frieze Art Fair, the London Restaurant Festival, London Film Festival, and London Cocktail Week vie for Londoners’ admittedly limited attention spans.

I managed to make it to a fortified wine tasting event as part of Cocktail Week and dinner at the Criterion as part of the London Restaurant Festival - both were excellent.  But I drink sherry and eat out all the time: Frieze happens only once a year (thank god).  The tent in Regent’s Park is already well on its way toward being dismantled, but people will be talking about the art, the sales, the inexplicably impossible waiting times to purchase a coffee for, oh, the next three days.  I don’t know what it is about London that so encourages cultural ADD, but if the last few weeks have been anything to go by, it’s all but impossible for any one thing to hold public attention for more than seven days. 

Anyway, I digress.  The thing about Frieze is that if you’re not buying you have to be absolutely ruthless.  I stomped around the fair in two hours on Friday afternoon, daring something to spark my interest.  That said, the object that most took my fancy was a beautiful, dark-grey worsted wool suit worn by one of the eighteen-year old sales monkeys at Victoria Miro, though I have a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t for sale…  Funnily enough, my other favourite works were also at Victoria Miro’s stand.  I’d forgotten that Alex Hartley was represented by VM and it was a pleasant surprise to see two new works on display.  I first saw his work at a solo show at the Fruitmarket in 2007.  I love the way he integrates photography with sculpture and installation alongside larger buildings and architectural concerns.  In many ways Hartley works as an architect would in that he scouts for the perfect location, but then transforms the site not with a literal building, but by taking photographs and then transforming the photographs with low-relief sculptural elements added to the surface of the prints.  Hartley’s been working on a rather conceptual project for the Cultural Olympiad, which perhaps explains why he’s been off the radar for a bit, so it was a nice surprise to see a few new pieces.

At Plan B, I spotted a new Adrian Ghenie and though it was a decent example of his work, it wasn’t half as spectacular as the pieces on show at Haunch of Venison last year.  Not sure what happened there…

Bortolami’s stand was lovely, full of pieces from Brooklyn-based artist, Richard Aldrich.  I’d never heard of Aldrich before and spent a bit of time perusing previous exhibitions.  His work looks a bit hit and miss, but I think Bortolami did a superb job of curating his pieces for Frieze.  There’s a rather charming  ‘slide painting’ where a blank canvas is broken up by a single, back lit 35mm slide.  There was another large Aldrich canvas which I loved: a pale, peachy salmon-coloured wash takes up most of the canvas, punctuated by a little wall of turquoise and something like a stone-circle at the bottom of the frame.  I don’t know what it is or what it’s supposed to be, it’s not the most exquisite piece of work I’ve seen, but it’s confidently done and quite captivating.  I stood looking at it for a good 3 minutes, which in Frieze time is a bloody eternity.

Another piece I loved was a set of works by Julius Koller for Galerie Martin Janda.  Slovakian artist Koller, again someone I’m relatively unfamiliar with, has a bitty, almost anthropological approach to making art.  The series of six objects, created between 1966-78 from what I can deduce, ranged from a marked-up loo roll, to a stamped piece of paper, to an intricate drawing of a town scape on a piece of found paper and was completely captivating – like finding a time capsule from a lost civilisation.  Koller died in 2007, and I later found out that the entire collection of works was bought by the Tate for their permanent collection.  It's amusing that I like so little of the Tate's collection, yet their buyers (at least one, anyway) clearly have good taste.

Perhaps my favourite piece, though, was a work called 'when what was when' by Claire Harvey at Amsterdam-based Galerie Fons Welters.  An entire wall had been given over to a display of small glass slides, each featuring an oil-painted figurative character.  The whole thing was slightly surreal and a little bit bonkers: one bit of the display consisted of a foot-long wooden shelf piled up with sand and an egg nested in the sand next to one of the little glass slides.  But the piece was also whimsical and clever – the slides were stuck to the wall with white tack and many of the figures seemed to interact with the very material fixing them to the wall.

There were a few other pieces that I liked (some images below), but nothing really took my breath away.  Having said that, the quality of the work this year was definitely better than last year. But to be honest, Frieze really isn’t about quality; it’s all about the money, baby.  And given that people will be talking about sales figures for at least the next two days, no doubt this year’s Frieze will chalk up to be a totally massive success. 

changes

This morning I found out that my sweet, bonkers cat, Seven, died.  It’s difficult to articulate without sounding over the top, but I loved that creature and it’s all rather distressing.

Seven

Even still, these things happen.  Without wanting to sound like a Hallmark card, I know it’s part of the cycle of things and perfectly natural, but it’s still terribly sad.  Rather curiously, I wrote most of this post last night and it’s all about change.

Here goes.

There’s something about the changing of the seasons, but particularly the transition from summer heat to autumnal chill that always brings on a bout of self-reflection, a stock take of the past year.  I think it’s because I’ve spent nearly every October of my life starting a new school year so this month, far more than January, always feels like the true beginning of the year, the time to make new goals and assess the progress of previous plans and resolutions.

So. Where am I this October?  For the first time in twenty-odd years I am not starting October as a student.  On Monday I submitted my thesis to the examinations office so now it's just a few months of waiting while the examiners scribble furiously in red pen throughout the margins and then, after that's done, the viva.  Post viva, I shall be Dr. Crystal Bennes and none the wiser for it.

The nicest thing about finishing my thesis is not that I have my life back, for I seem to be busier than ever, but rather that the feeling of work never ending has vanished. Sure, I still have lots to do, but there's no longer the relentless little fairy of academia sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear that I should be working whenever I'm doing anything that isn't working. I can tell you, it's absolutely liberating.

Other news, other changes: I'm moving. From Clerkenwell. To Hackney Wick. I've spent the better part of the last week and a half freaking out about this, but now I'm rather giddy. I like change. It excites me.  New environments spur new thinking and, though I love Clerkenwell, I think the stimulus provided by new people and a new part of London will more than make up for the loss of such a central location and such great restaurants.  Plus given Hackney Wick's proximity to the Olympic site, it's going to undergo an interesting metamorphosis over the next few years and being a part of that is bound to be interesting.  The only thing I told myself I really couldn't live without was a top-notch breakfasting spot within a ten-minute walk of chez moi.  Luckily, the brilliant and delicious Counter is exactly that.  Their breakfast is one of the best in London. Make the pilgrimage. You'll thank me.

My new place in Hackney Wick

From breakfast to snack food. Or so it would appear.  Ai Weiwei's new installation of 100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds has just opened in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern.  Let me waste no time: I don't like it. At all. Given that I tend to loathe most of the TM's blockbuster exhibitions, perhaps this isn't all that surprising, but I loved Miroslaw Balka's aircraft hangar of a blind-man's box and was expecting something equally sensational from Weiwei. 

More than that I was expecting something provocative, a statement piece, for lack of a better phrase.  Instead what I've been given is a work entirely without context desperately trying to carve out meaning via the artist’s reputation.  An oceanless beach of sunflower seeds does not a statement make.  No doubt the problem lies in the fact that Weiwei is so well known as an agent provocateur, an artist whose work so disturbed the smooth facade of the Chinese government that he was beaten by the police for investigating the student casualties of the Sichuan earthquake.  This is not the challenging, affront of a work one expects from such an individual, let alone artist.  It is a work with an imposed framework of meaning which supposedly enables the viewer to understand it, but only serves to distract from the fact that there is no significant meaning. 

Ai Weiwei's installation in the Tate Modern. photo by Loz Flowers

The sunflower seeds only work when one reads the accompanying text that explains each seed was individually hand painted by artisans in the workshops of Jingdezhen, where imperial porcelainware used to be made, workshops which have become increasingly commercialised.  Or that sunflower seeds were the snack-du-jour during the cultural revolution when other foodstuffs were scarce.  Conversely, I also don't want to accept the reductive viewpoint that I should enjoy the work as it is: something kind of fun to play in.  Perhaps this is unfair, but I expect more from an artist with Weiwei's reputation.  This could have, and should have, been an opportunity for both artist and institution - especially given that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee recently proved the threat of poor relations with China wasn't deterrent enough to award the Prize to a Chinese citizen - to create a truly provocative, forceful, and gripping piece of work.  100 million sunflower seeds is not challenging, nor beautiful, nor moving. It's disappointing. Now maybe if those seeds grew into 100 million sunflowers...