The Importance of Copyright

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69th position, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Chlamydia, Chow Mein, copyright, Culture Show, FT, Gilbert and George, How To Spend It, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marriage of Reason and Squalor, Spitalfields, symbolic acceleration to high value, Turner Prize

Clammie and I were sitting in the corner of Costamuchamoulah must-

seen cafe.  We know each other well enough to be rude, so I was deep

in Saturday’s FT and she was reading the Style section of some other

publication.

Hey, Clammie, I suddenly expostulated. Did you know that the Chapman

Brothers..?

As I said, we are impertinent to each other, so she cut me off

with: Who?

The Chapmans- Chapmen?-those guys called Jake and Dinos who do

joint artworks..

I thought that was Gilbert and George?

No, same kind of concept, but different people, I explained.

I think they both had connections with Spitalfields.  Anyway,

they..

Who?

The Chapmen…produced an artwork that depicted the 69th

sex position, in 2003.

Gosh!  Are there that many?! Sounds like Friday night in our house

when we  order a Chinese takeaway and I just say, ‘I’ll have a No. 69’.

Yeah, and if I’m there, I just say, ‘I’ll have what she’s having’.

We laughed like drains.  So immature!

But no one has made an artwork out of a takeaway, have they?

Clammie pondered aloud.

We could always get in first with an entry for the Turner Prize, I

suggested.  Clammie and Candia interviewed by Andrew Graham-

Dixon on The Culture Show. ‘Chow Really, Really Mean’.

No use, Clammie pointed out.  Everyone would think you were related

to him and we had been promoted through nepotism.  It’s the Dixon

surname that’s the problem.  Candia Stuart doesn’t sound as artistic

as Candia Dixon-Stuart, so I don’t think you could just ditch it!

Oh well, what about these Chapman guys?

She had looked faintly annoyed at having been interrupted in her

investigation through some glossies to determine whether antlers

were passe, or not, in current interiors, as accent pieces.

Well, the brother called Jake mentions that he wrote a novel in 2008

called ‘The Marriage of Reason and Squalor’ and they are planning on

making it into a film.

So?  The title sounds like some relationships I know of.

I told you we could be rude to each other.  Actually, my house is tidier

than hers.

They’re planning on calling it ‘Chlamydia’, after the female character,

I clarified.

Hmm, well I’ve had that name for over thirty five years, she grumbled.

But no doubt my parents didn’t have the foresight to take out a

copyright.

I hope it won’t result in any embarrassment for you, I observed.  They

might be having a go at the comfortable classes, such as ourselves.

How so?

Jake is quoted here as saying:.. our psychodramas furnish the bourgeoisie

with the sense that their world is radical and dangerous and audicious.

Say that again, Clammie requested.  Is there such a word?  Doesn’t he

mean ‘audacious’?

It’s probably a subversion of language, I reflected.  Or a deliberate

lexical sabotage on the part of the FT. They probably don’t appreciate people

who say, as Dino does, that anyone who has surplus money at the end of the

week after feeding themselves and paying for their fuel is a criminal.

No, I suppose not.  I mean the FT takes them out to lunch and then they

insult the readership of their host’s How To Spend It magazine.

She crumpled up her paper napkin and wiped her mouth with it, then

rudely grabbed the article from me and started reading it for herself.

It also says that they are-quote-‘voyeurs of their own work, not authors of

its meaning’, she informed me.  It sounds as if you are in good company,

Candia.  Surely that’s what informs your creativity!

I should hope that my behaviour is not so audicious, I laughed. But I

seriously question whether many people- even in Suttonford- have surplus

money at the end of the month nowadays.

I, for one, don’t, agreed Clammie.  Lattes have gone up so much

recently. It makes me feel radical to be sitting here.

Perhaps you have the answer in your own hands, I suggested.

What? She looked puzzled.

They say that you just need to learn a few tricks about symbolic

acceleration to high value.  Take that napkin..once the film comes out,

with your name, you could sell your authentically crumpled and/or doodled

napkin to a dealer.  Picasso and others did it, so you’d be in a tradition.

You could frame it and claim that it had exophoric reference.

So, you reckon stags’ antlers may be on the way out?

Post-Christmas, I’d say so. Think trash with attitude.   Or sell them the

rights to your name.  Should keep you in cappuccinos for life.

Audicious! she concurred.

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy

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acrylic, David Hockney, Mr Mrs Clark and Percy, My Last Duchess, Robert Browning, Tate, Turner Prize

I remember being shocked to discover that this painting had deteriorated and needed conservation.  This is a poem to parody Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess– just because I feel like injecting some art comment after the Turner Prize results were announced.

Sonia was disappointed to find out that her Laughing Cavalier portrait was a fake- see Fake of Fortune post.  This is about the authentic Hockney portrait’s erstwhile condition.

I hope they’ve stabilised it now:

That’s our last Hockney painting

hanging on that wall.

Its colours used to be alive;

we call that piece a blunder now.

‘Twas not her husband’s presence only

caused such serenity in Mrs. Clark.

The cat had something to do with it –

before the colours went quite dark.

Her throat’s half-flush is very faint,

which may be down to fading paint.

Perhaps we were too easily impressed

and liked whate’er we looked on.

The victory of modernism proves quite Pyrrhic,

considering the limitations of acrylic.

If properly applied, the paint should last

but if it’s not, deterioration’s fast.

And then we had the experts from the Tate

debating if they had a fake or flake.

So who would stoop to blame this sort of trifling?

The legal experts seemed to think a few.

The artists weren’t in the Master class

and owners seemed prepared to sue.

For, as the tide removes the lover’s name from off the strand,

Art need not transcend nature for Time has the upper hand.

I thought Munchkins were something else.

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Edvard Munch, husband, Keith Chegwin, Millennium Bridge, Munch, Tate Modern, Turner Prize

Yesterday the Husband and I had an earlyish start for the metropolis and a brisk walk from London Bridge to Tate Modern, heading for lunch in the restaurant.

We were seated on the Shard side.  Is this tower complete?  Maybe it is meant to end in a poppering pear, split seed pod effect.  There are cranes and a vast building project behind the gallery.  At least we weren’t on the riverside, spectacular skyline or not.  On a previous occasion I was privy to a bird’s eye view of a dead body being fished out of The Thames by a boat-hook, though no one else seemed to notice.

Munch would have, I thought, as we forked out £15 each, stifling a silent scream, in order to view the exhibition The Modern Eye.

Come to think of it, I could have painted a modern version of the iconic painting by placing the figure on The Millennium Bridge.  Bit late for this year’s Turner Prize, though. Must copyright the idea.

Yes, what it is to be an angst-ridden artist.

Apparently Munch’s bohemian friend, Jaeger, used to publish parodies of the Commandments, such as:

Thou shalt write thy life.

Well, dear Hans, I have obeyed your injunction in this very blog.  Could it be an art form?  Candia’s face is slowly emerging from the chiaroscuro in the manner of early Munch woodcuts, but without the self-mutilating gouges, one hopes.

Candia also offers a range of revelations from casual glimpses to defiantly heroic poses.

(Leaflet text by Simon Bolitho)

She devours pretentiousness, including her own, with the ravenous appetite of a vampire and refers to herself in the third person. Her re-workings of raw emotional pain are endless.

Munch regarded his paintings as his children, in the same way that Candia labours-or should I revert to the first person? – in the way that I (oh, the vulnerability of stark honesty) labour to bring to the birth these very posts, with their unusual perspectives and exaggerations. (Even I am becoming confused over personae.)

I too catch my figures in chance poses, or portray them in motion, stepping towards the reader in cinematic fashion.  Like Spartacus Chetwynd, I could animate them through my own carnival troup, or would I merely become a latter day odd man out presenter, such as Keith Chegwin, alias Cheggers?  No Turner Prize possibility in that case.

In my blog I attempt to recreate the Kammerspiele Theatre, just as Munch did in his naturalistic designs for the set of Ibsen’s Ghosts.  This shared style is adapted to the investigation of psychological intensity.

Am I suffering from delusional grandeur?  Do not answer that.

The constrained length of my average posting is brilliantly suited to the claustrophobic effects which Munch endeavoured to create.  He saw the stage as an enclosed room with one missing wall, which enabled voyeurs to peer inside.  The other three walls entrap the actors.

In the same way, in a few paragraphs, I display the foibles and follies of my fellow-Munchkins and prevent the reader from escaping.

In Death of a Bohemian, 1925-6, Munch shows his friend, Jaeger, surrounded by hallucinatory figures and the films record street scenes, traffic, friends and even his own image, just as I attempt to do, even down to a shared  idiosyncratic jerkiness of vision and haphazard chronology.

Munch lived in relative seclusion, but followed current affairs through the media and he created a body of work which responded to local, national and international events, just as I do.  But would he have discovered humour in current re-workings of his paintings which show a bald Mo Farah screaming on the bridge?  You see, Candia can allow such variations and indeed delights in them.

Like his self-portrait in The Night Wanderer, I find myself, or Candia does, in a similar position-ie/ condemned to spend the hours of darkness as a gaunt insomniac, enduring hours of anguish in order to produce art for the masses. I will make a Gratende Kvinne out of my weeping.  And will the public be grateful?  No, like gannets- nay, fulmars- they are inclined to project my carefully pre-digested pap back into my face, like vicious chicks punishing the lonely alpiniste of the world’s cultural sea stacks.

Yet, like Munch, I will comment on the very throes we endure for art’s sake:

I don’t want to die suddenly or without knowing it.  I want to have that last experience too.

And more, much more than that, we will share every last minute with you.