Life Class

Tags

Beauty and Beast, bubonic plague, burlesque, Dejeuner sur L'Herbe, dermo-abrasion, infantilisation, life class, Manet, Olympia, persona hygiene, Titian, Venus of Urbino

A re-blog to cheer everyone up…

 

Drusilla Fotheringay-Syylk, part-time Art teacher and

housemistress at St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted

Girl, likes to get out and about in the community, so she

offers a Monday evening adults’ class in Suttonford, on her

day off.  She rents shop premises  vacated by Aquanibble,

whose piscatory dermo-abrasion service never really took

off. People had been reluctant to get involved with the

pyranahs.

Most of the potential customers preferred to retain their

calloused skins.  Indeed, some actively cultivated the equivalent

of a rhinoceros hide, whether metaphorically, or not.  The minority

delivered their dermis to Beauty and the Beast, once named Pride

Knows No Pain before Citronella took over the business and the

premises.

But to our tale…

The last straw had been when she went into the staff loo and was

confronted by a laminated instruction panel comprising of no less

than twelve boxes, illustrating the correct way to wash her hands.

I think I have survived *years without succumbing to bubonic plague,

she fumed. Then she said *****under her breath, I hate to inform

you.  You see, you just can’t get the same quality of staff any more.

On entering the cubicle she wondered if there would be any further

instructions on hygiene: ten steps to wiping… No, she didn’t wish to

think about it.  This excessive infantilisation of adults was driving her

to deliberately spit in the tea urn. She just fantasised: don’t worry!

(Well, they should pay them more and they’d get better types

applying for the posts.)

Anyway, it was this that drove her to seek mature company, save her

sanity and to have her talents fully recognised.

And so it was that on the first Monday of the month, Drusilla faced

her initial ten adults, who had turned up with their portable easels,

squirrel brushes, palettes of acrylics and boxes of pastels.

She spoke for the first three quarters of an hour on perspective, flat

surfaces, light sources and ways of seeing.  She showed them a

painting by Titian: The Venus of Urbino.  Then she sensed that they

were all itching to start drawing.

Melinda D’Oyly-Carter, the local masseuse and aromatherapist,

emerged from behind a decoupaged screen, wearing a pink chenille

bathrobe and fluffy mules.

Tristram flinched.  She had been a fellow contestant in Come Dine

 With Me and had, in fact, won the £1,000 prize.   He was feeling

discomfited as he was the only male in the class.

Drusilla turned on the fan heater.

The ladies arranged their easels around the chaise longue and one or

two sharpened their pencils; others snapped a stalk of charcoal and

yet another cleaned her putty eraser.

Tristram suddenly felt queasy.

Excuse me, ladies, I’ve suddenly remembered that I left some

meringues in the oven.

He fled.

Melinda, or Mimi, as she preferred to be addressed, disrobed in one

confident, burlesque gesture and lay in an Olympia position, which

would have gratified Manet.

Half an hour of making marks, instructed Drusilla, wondering where

Mimi had secreted all the business cards she was distributing. Next

week we will explore the symbolism of the cane in Le Dejeuner sur

L’Herbe.

 

Democracy Has Bad Taste

Tags

Bentham, Charles Saatchi, Damien HIrst, Dan Snow, Ernest Hemingway, FT, Grayson Perry, List of Reith Lectures, Manet, Nigella Lawson, Olympia, Proust, pushpin, Richard Hoggart, sociology, springer spaniel, transformation, Trinny Woodall, Uses of Literacy

Brassica could hardly hear herself speak for the frothing of the coffee machine

and the screech of a toddler.

Yeah, it’s that bloke in a frock who’s giving The Reith Lectures, she informed

me.

Who?  Grayson Perry?  Suddenly I was interested in what she was saying.

Yip.  I liked his tapestries on class but I admit that I used to think they-

the artists, I mean- actually made the stuff themselves.

What?  You thought that Damien Hirst went out and caught his own shark,

like Ernest Hemingway?  I was somewhat surprised.

Well, I thought they would weave the tapestries, or, say, Henry Moore

would cast his own bronzes in his back yard.

Right.  Before the scrap metal guys nicked them.  Brass, you’ve just got

to understand the difference between craft and art.

Which is?

Some philosophers have described it as the difference between pushpin

and poetry.

Pushpin?

It’s like shove halfpenny. I tried to clarify the analogy.  Look,

I addressed her.  Read the front page of the Life and Arts section of the

FT.

I reached up and took down the pink pages of a grease-stained

newspaper from the wall rack.

You see, I gestured, take a look at the artwork in this cafe.  I think it comes

from The Suttonford Art Society’s Annual Show.  You be the judge.  Is it art?

If it goes by financial value, then I’d say not, she deliberated.

Emmm, yeah.  Not many of them have a reserved sticker.  I suppose that

they could come under therapeutic, or popular art categories.

Some of them could be improved by more sympathetic

presentation, she decided.

Yes.  Proust wrote that we can only see beauty if we look through a

gilded frame, I expanded on the theme.  I wonder what Charles Saatchi

is collecting now..? Certainly not portraits of Nigella!  Maybe Trinny

Woodall woodcuts?  Skinny Trinny as Olympia.  Not a good look!

My granny used to commission oils of sunsets to match the colours in her

swirly carpets, Brassie mused.

(You could never accuse Brass of being a snob.)  She was reading the

front page by now and she came out with:

Are individual works of historical significance, or do they exhibit aesthetic

sophistication?

No, I replied quietly, looking carefully round the room for any paint

stains on clothing.  There is an acrylic over there which shows the oldest

pub in the town, though.  It all comes down to Bentham’s pushpin/ poetry

distinction again.

But, endorsement is surely part of it?  I mean, if we placed a label under that

unconvincing representation of a Springer Spaniel and it announced that it was

by Dan Snow, would it change our perception of it? Brassie probed.

No, but it would change my perception of him, sadly, I replied.

Brassie began to show enthusiasm for this debate.  Didn’t Richard Hoggart,

who incidentally lived not too far from here, discuss some of this in his book

on popular culture, The Uses of Literacy?

Yawn.  Early sociology, I said dismissively.  Mind you, he made some good

points.

Brassie pushed on, paraphrasing as she read: Apparently, what the’ lovely

consensus’ agree on is seriousness.

Mmm, some of these are seriously bad.  I tried to be generous and failed. Okay.

Who is going to validate them?

Brassie brightened up.  I expect their mummies, grannies, aunts, husbands

and wives might rescue them from ignominy.  They’ll probably buy them.

So, laying aside meritocracy, they will be saved for posterity by love? I

ventured.

The greatest ennobler, breathed Brassie.  The Art of Human Understanding.

Compassion. An act of grace.  Love for the unlovely.  Transformation!

 

Life Class

Tags

Come Dine with Me, dermoabrasion, Manet, Olympia, Titian, Venus of Urbino

Drusilla Fotheringay-Syylk, part-time Art teacher and housemistress

at St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl, likes to get out

and about in the community, so she offers a Monday evening

adults’ class in Suttonford, on her day off.  She rents a shop which

has been vacated by Aquanibble, whose piscatory dermo-abrasion

service never really took off.

Most of the potential customers preferred to retain their calloused

skins.  Indeed, some actively cultivated the equivalent of a

rhinoceros hide, whether metaphorically, or not.  The minority

delivered their dermis to Beauty and the Beast, once named Pride

Knows No Pain before Citronella took over the business and the

premises.

But to our tale…

The last straw had been when she went into the staff loo and was

confronted by a laminated instruction panel comprising of no less

than twelve boxes, illustrating the correct way to wash her hands.

I think I have survived *years without succumbing to bubonic plague,

she fumed. Then she said *****under her breath, I hate to inform

you.  You see, you just can’t get the same quality of staff any more.

On entering the cubicle she wondered if there would be any further

instructions on hygiene: ten steps to wiping… No, she didn’t wish to

think about it.  This excessive infantilisation of adults was driving her

to deliberately spit in the tea urn. She just fantasised: don’t worry!

(Well, they should pay them more and they’d get better types

applying for the posts.)

Anyway, it was this that drove her to seek mature company, save her

sanity and to have her talents fully recognised.

And so it was that on the first Monday of the month, Drusilla faced

her initial ten adults, who had turned up with their portable easels,

squirrel brushes, palettes of acrylics and boxes of pastels.

She spoke for the first three quarters of an hour on perspective, flat

surfaces, light sources and ways of seeing.  She showed them a

painting by Titian: The Venus of Urbino.  Then she sensed that they

were all itching to start drawing.

Melinda D’Oyly-Carter, the local masseuse and aromatherapist,

emerged from behind a decoupaged screen, wearing a pink chenille

bathrobe and fluffy mules.

Tristram flinched.  She had been a fellow contestant in Come Dine

 With Me and had, in fact, won the £1,000 prize.   He was feeling

discomfited as he was the only male in the class.

Drusilla turned on the fan heater.

The ladies arranged their easels around the chaise longue and one or

two sharpened their pencils; others snapped a stalk of charcoal and

yet another cleaned her putty eraser.

Tristram suddenly felt queasy.

Excuse me, ladies, I’ve suddenly remembered that I left some

meringues in the oven.

He fled.

Melinda, or Mimi, as she preferred to be addressed, disrobed in one

confident, burlesque gesture and lay in an Olympia position, which

would have gratified Manet.

Half an hour of making marks, instructed Drusilla, wondering where

Mimi had secreted all the business cards she was distributing. Next

week we will explore the symbolism of the cane in Le Dejeuner sur

L’Herbe.