Frank Auerbach at Tate Britain

It's fair to say that I've been waiting for this show for over 20 years. If you want to cut to the chase however, go to this show. It's a great show of one of the greatest painters we have ever had. But if you want to know the reasons for the special place he holds in my heart, I'll briefly tell you why.

Head of J.Y.M II 1984-5

When I was fourteen I was taken to the then Tate Gallery (no Tate modern or Tate Britain, only the one Tate Gallery at that time in the building now known as Tate Britain). I had done a few drawings that showed I had some facility with a pencil, and my parents, naturally, thought taking me to a gallery might further spur my interest. There I saw a painting by Piet Mondrian, one of his compositions with red and blue. I was rather incredulous at the idea of that as a "painting" since to me it seemed nothing more than colouring in. So, I went home, took my brothers oil painting set (which he had only used once), and set about doing my own Mondrian. My version was perhaps not quite as sophisticated as Mondrian's, but my view hasn't really changed in all these years, the title to his work being as factual as the work itself was not what I would call painting - it was, and still is, nothing more than a study in composition, only one of the elements that go to create a good painting. But I better not digress too far down that path since this blog is about Frank Auerbach.

That was in the summer. I carried on painting my own versions of other painters I liked from the Tate's collection, most especially Salvador Dali, until one week in November my father showed me a review in the newspaper of a show Auerbach had on at Marlborough Fine Art on Albermarle Street in the heart of the moneyed contemporary art scene around Cork Street in Piccadilly. He showed me the review partly because it was interesting painting, and partly because one of my parents friends, Philip Kossoff, was the brother of the painter Leon Kossoff (still alive and working as I write), who is an old friend of Frank Auerbach, having both gone to the same art college together many decades before.

Serendipity would have it that later that same week I was going to one of the Royal Institution's Christmas science lectures with my school. As I walked up the road towards the Royal Institution with my friends, I passed a number of small commercial galleries, having a good look through the windows as my nascent interest in painting demanded, and there, on the same street as the Royal Institution, unknown to me at the time, was Marlborough Fine Art, and the very exhibition whose review my father had shown me. It was a revelation.

Here were paintings the like of which I had never seen before, and which, more than any other paintings before or since, spoke to me as a friend. Their thick paint and expressive nature was everything I was, inside; that was how I wanted to paint - no, not wanted to, had to paint. They were quite simply me in every way other than their actual authorship.

I went home, and that weekend started painting my own Auerbachs, as I had done with Dali and Mondrian and countless others. I even painted a portrait of him from the photograph in the newspaper that accompanied the review, took a photo of it and sent it to him, care of Marlborough Fine Art, and was extremely gratified to receive a reply from the man himself, and not just a thankyou note, but a proper letter (no email of course at that time), and there followed a brief correspondence between us about painting which I treasure.

So now you can see why a retrospective of this painter, this true painter, was something I had been waiting for ever since.

Leon Kossoff 1950's

Now to get to the exhibition itself which spans some 60 years, from the 1950's to the 2010's, but to say I love everything he has ever done would not be true - he is not perfect, but he is a true painter.

The paintings from the 1950's I always found a bit overdone. Their extremely heavy use of paint I always thought a bit of a, well, gimmick is too strong a word, but the 3 inch thick impasto laid down over months or years always made me wonder if he shouldn't just start again and try to get it right. But I think this very weakness, as I saw it, spoke to me since it was clearly his love of the medium that spurred him to keep going, keep going, and still keep going until he produced something that worked. They are dark, brooding, and a little stagnant I feel. But he was on his way somewhere, somewhere good. A typical example is the portrait of Leon Kossoff, a painting I still don't like much. Sometimes, you just have to know when to stop.

As he goes into the 1960's, the late 1960's in particular, his true ability, and artistry, starts to come out. For a long time I concentrated my own efforts on painting people, portraits. Here Frank Auerbach creates paintings exactly as I always intended to. They are concentrated examinations of a person, of their face, their character, their being. The heavy layered paint is still there, but with some brighter colours and a little more understanding of the medium itself, they have become objects that live in a way that "pictures" of people never do. Go to the National Gallery's portrait award show and you will see many many pictures of people, painted with pure artifice, nothing more than pretence of a painting, an illustration of a person's appearance fooling you into believing their is character when in fact all you get is an act. Not so with Frank Auerbach. His portraits are more extant than most people let alone paintings of them. The existence of the person behind the painting is so evident you could have a conversation with them, as long as you don't require it to be two-way. The paint itself, still heavy, becomes a little lighter in application, while at the same time becoming more expressive as he sheds some of the over-burdensome neediness of previous works.

David Landau 1990

In the 1970's he really hits his stride. Both portraits, figures, and landscapes start to use the pure joy of the brush stroke. The brush stroke is the most underrated and yet most obvious tool of the painter. He now has this supreme tool at his disposal, and through the 1980's, 90's, and on, the paint, thick or thin, has become his accomplice do express his perception of the world. The true power of this idea cannot be underestimated since the subjects themselves are not what is important. What you get is pure human experience expressed through paint - that is what makes a work of art. There is no artifice, there is no pretence, there is no sense of imagery trumping art. The true remit of art, to communicate the nature of existence from one human being to another without that human being being there to persuade you of the fact, is there in front of you eyes. You can be left in no doubt that the painter, and the subject, whether a person or a place, did exist and that you are there with them, back in time to when the object itself was created.

Needles to say not every painting is a masterpiece, but when he makes one that works, there is really nothing better in the realm of painting. If you are a painter because the medium speaks to you more than any other, you have to see this show.

Park Village East 2006

There are few painters that I admire or respect as much as Frank Auerbach. Lucian Freud, while alive, was often touted as Britain's greatest living painter. I never agreed with that. I went to his retrospective in the same gallery sometime around 2001, 7 rooms of his paintings, and by the 3rd room I was getting bored. It was the same thing over and over again. Sure, some of the paintings were brilliant, but in every one what you got was Lucian Freud, not the object of his attentions. I recently read somewhere that Auerbach, also a friend of Freud's and of Francis Bacon too, didn't consider himself to have the talent of either of them. But I disagree. Francis Bacon I also admire - he used paint, he used the brush stroke to express himself to bring true power to a painting, I don't see the same in Freud. But then, the media will have their way and attach labels to people especially when imagery, art's poorer more flatulent cousin, heaves itself into view. Bacon created better images than Auerbach, but Auerbach's paintings trump them all. He is a true artist, a true painter, the greatest brush-smith of our time.

Art Recipe: The Weisse Cube by Addi & Werner Weisse

This is the recipe as written down by Arnold Tuppley for the Weisse twins' now infamous work: The Weisse Cube.

You can read the story behind this work here.

RECIPE

This is an event that requires the cooperation of the public to make it work. The white cube set down into the floor of the space is the focus for the event, where an artist is interred and supplied with materials and equipment by the public. The artist’s job is then to produce work with those materials. The quality of the work produced should challenge the supremacy of the event itself, which must last exactly eighteen days. After that, an exhibition is held in the cube itself to display the works the artist has created for the public to judge for themselves which side has won.

MATERIALS

·         1 warehouse or similar space, at least 900 sq ft, with a ceiling of at least 5m

·         scaffolding

·         plywood or similar boarding materials

·         20 litres white emulsion paint for the cube, the platform can be painted or not as you wish

·         1 artist

·         1 ladder

·         1 hidden door in the side of the cube

·         1 emergency exit

·         1 noose

·         1 security guard

·         publicity

STEP-BY-STEP

1.

Find a suitable venue and measure your artist’s height.

A large space is required for this piece, preferably a warehouse or some other such structure with a high ceiling of five or more metres. You need to ensure that there is enough room to build within the space a raised platform that is twice the artist’s height, or 3.44m (twice Werner’s height and the height of the original cube), whichever is the greater.

2.

Build the false floor with the cube as a hole in its centre going down to the real floor below.

Within the space erect the floor with scaffolding and plywood to the height calculated above. Stairs should take the visitor straight up to this level from the entrance to the space so that they are unaware of the real floor below them until they come to the central hole, the reason for their visit, which should be located as near as possible to the very centre of the room. At this centre, the hole goes down to the floor below, as wide and long as it is deep, a cube, whose internal walls should be painted white. There should be no discernable point of entry or exit from the cube, but there must be a hidden door, one that the artist is aware of but which cannot be seen by the public, that leads to an escape route from the building in case of an emergency, should one arise, and an optional toilet.

Along the top edge of the cube the minimum of protective cordons, fences, or warnings, should be put up to allow for local health and safety laws, the ideal being nothing at all. Any cordon or barrier should not be visible from within the cube at the natural eye level of the participating artist so that their view is solely the white walls of the cube and then the ceiling, with no interference. At the same time the visitor to the piece should be able to look down and observe the artist, and be able to throw down to them equipment or materials.

The raised floor can be painted any colour you like, or not at all.

3.

Employ a security guard for the duration of the event.

A security guard must be employed to watch over the artist, and to make sure no untoward behaviour is experienced by the artist from members of the public. If necessary they can help the public to throw down the things they have brought, or to stop them throwing things at the artist directly. They must also keep note of the artist’s behaviour to ensure they do not spend their time hiding under the false floor or overusing the facilities provided, or in any other way trying to shirk their responsibility as an artist, otherwise the piece will be rendered null and void. In this way, the security guard acts as watchman and invigilator for the piece.

4.

Publicise the event.

Care must be taken to ensure sufficient publicity has been arranged to avoid the prospect of the artist sitting in the cube with absolutely nothing to do. It is the responsibility of the organisers to ensure the public are aware of the event and of the role they have to play to make it work.­­­­­­­­­­­

5.

Hang a noose from the scaffolding under the platform near the cube on the morning of the first day.

It has become a rather macabre tradition to hang a noose from the scaffolding under the false floor in memory of Addi Weisse, the author of the piece, during a solemn ceremony that remembers both brothers. This should be carried out on the first morning of the event, with all those involved in its re-creation descending down into the cube, lighting two candles in remembrance, and then entering the space beneath the raised floor through the hidden door where a noose is hung from the scaffolding. When this ceremony is complete, everyone returns to the cube, and each exits, ascending the ladder, leaving the artist on their own. The ladder is withdrawn, and the artist blows out the candles signifying the start of the event.

6.

Use a ladder to help the Artist gain access down into the cube every morning, and to ascend every evening, for a continuous period of eighteen days.

The artist should be interned at 10am on every morning, having the ladder withdrawn, and exiting at least 8 hours later. This pattern is repeated every day for eighteen consecutive days. They enter with nothing except for the clothes they stand up in, and an optional two litre bottle of drinking water.

Once the event has started the public are allowed to come in and throw down into the cube tools, materials, equipment, anything they think appropriate with which the artist can then make art. The artist’s task is then to produce art whose veracity and quality must surpass the spectacle of the event.

7.

After the eighteenth day, build a staircase down from the edge of the cube to its floor, and prepare it for exhibition.

The conclusion to the event is reached after the eighteenth day has finished. The following day all debris must be removed form the cube, and a staircase built down to its floor for the public to gain access easily. An exhibition should then be set up in the cube of the work that the artist has produced during their time in the cube, a private view held, and then the exhibition opened to the public to visit for a period of one week.

The Weisse Cube

Arnold Tuppley was in Berlin at the time as a guest of Günter Hoffman, staying with the Weisse twins in the flat that Hoffman paid for. He grew used to their constant arguing which only abated during brief periods of intense concentration when they were working on some new idea or hopeful project. But on one particular night their familiar argument took on a new viciousness in their little flat near the centre of Berlin.

Addi’s relationship with Werner had always been close, but from an early age it was clear that Werner had all the talent to make things, to bring to life thoughts and ideas that otherwise would have remained stuck in the limbo of Addi’s mind, whose fingers were simply not as adept at transferring visions into reality. Addi’s lack of ability in making the works he conceived, having to rely on his brother’s practical nature, imbued in him a lack of self confidence, a feeling that in some way he was only half an artist, which Werner was well aware of.

Arnold Tuppley had been out exploring the city, and returned to find the twins mid-argument, with a friend of Addi’s, Zara Friese, sitting on the sofa making little headway in engaging either of the two in a different conversation.

The argument continued as Tuppley took a seat next to Zara, bringing in specific cases and animosities which came to the surface, lubricated by cheap beer, until after another assault by Addi, Werner, the older of the two by minutes, cruelly fought back again, claiming his brother had done nothing but ride on his coat tails his entire life.

Their flat was a half finished open plan studio, with rough bricks broken where two rooms had been knocked together. Werner was in the small kitchen area while Addi was pacing and shouting from the other side of the flat, goading his brother over and over again that he had no ideas of his own, and far from riding on anyone’s coat tails he was the only real artist in the family. Werner screamed abuse back at him and, grabbing a knife that lay on the worktop next to him, threw it towards Addi. It missed, by a long way, but the shock to both of them from the transformation of violent argument to violent attack was apparent as Addi, suddenly sick with fright, ran from the flat, followed soon after by an ashen Werner.

Arnold Tuppley and Zara Friese were left in the twins’ flat, alone. Though the argument had been in German, Tuppley had heard it enough times to have gathered what they were on about, and with Zara translating into faultless English, Tuppley was left in no doubt as to what was going on between the two brothers.

Tuppley had met Zara a couple of times before at bars with the twins. Addi was obviously attracted to her, but despite Zara rejecting his advances they still got on well as friends, and Tuppley too found her good company to be with. After Addi and Werner had both walked out, they too decided to leave and headed off to Zara’s place, not far from where the twins lived.

The following day the twins had made up, as they always did, and Addi went to Zara’s flat to apologise for them both. But the twins’ relationship had clearly taken a knock, and later that day and into the evening in a bar with Günter Hoffman, Zara Friese, and Arnold Tuppley, the argument continued.

This time it was rather restrained, each trying to make their point more politely and with more consideration than usual, but there was an atmosphere building, with both making vein attempts at recruiting their friends to their own particular side of the argument. They all knew what had happened in the flat, and so no one wanted to get involved.

A silence settled between them after they had exhausted all possibilities of gaining any external support, then Addi left the bar with a sour look on his face.

They were, of course, rather poor, as struggling young artist are wont to be, and maintained their less than luxurious lifestyle by working for Hoffman to hang shows and help with their promotion – in short, doing whatever Hoffman asked of them.  They had come to the attention of Hoffman following their rather nihilistic installation “Entfremdung” (Alienation), which had the effect of alienating the brothers almost entirely from the artistic establishment of Berlin, while providing Hoffman the opportunity to take two, young, imaginative artists under his wing.  Hoffman paid their rent, and if they had even a slightly interesting idea for art they wanted to make, he would willingly pay for the materials, and if it looked promising would put it in a show, or even set one up especially.

So when Addi returned to the bar that evening just before it closed, he brought back with him an idea, a complete work of art, a concept that would, in essence, challenge Werner to an artistic fight that would define the difference between the twins and prove once and for all that either they were nothing without each other, or that from now on they must work apart.

He could have had no idea at the time that in fact what he brought back with him that evening was their deaths.

Addi’s plan was to construct a room, a cube, 3.5 metres or so along each side, which was set down into the floor of a much larger space, open at the top, much like a pit, with no visible escape route; it was a trap, literally and metaphorically.  Werner would be let down into the cube in the morning via a ladder which was then removed, and the public invited in to freely provide Werner with whatever art materials they chose, or food, or abuse – whatever they wanted.  Werner’s task was then to create art with what he was given within the eighteen days that the event would last for.  Each morning he would descend, and each evening emerge, but during the day there was no way out, and no option but to work.

What Addi had done by putting Werner into this forced space was to cleverly turn his own brother into a work of art by making him the artist observed, the idea of an artist, exposed to the public to gawp at and throw tit-bits down to and watch, like a lion feeding, as Werner tried to challenge the supremacy of the event by creating art that was more important than the concept of the artist.

Günter Hoffman loved the idea and enthusiastically provided an empty warehouse for the event, all the scaffolding and boarding materials, and the publicity required to ensure the public’s participation, but it was clearly an unfair fight from the start; Werner was a sacrificial victim to Addi’s ego, and whether Werner liked it or not, it was such an audacious plan, such a brilliant idea, that he had no choice but to agree, bated into a trap that there was no way out of.

The show started well.

The crowds gathered and threw down so many things to Werner that every evening he had to sift the rubbish from what he could usefully use so as to not completely fill the space.  There were those who enthusiastically provided him with materials he requested, and those who came to abuse him in the absence of his brother, claiming that together they had degraded the very idea of art.

A security guard had been employed by Hoffman to keep the public away from the edge of the cube to stop them falling in since Addi was categorical that there should be no visible barrier.  But in the end the guard was more usefully employed in keeping away those who talked incessantly at Werner, making it almost impossible for him to concentrate on his work.

Tuppley, who had moved in with Zara after the knife throwing incident which had unexpectedly brought them together as more than just friends, kept Werner company during some of the quieter days, while Addi kept his distance, resisting the temptation to openly goad his brother.

By the seventh day Werner thought he was getting somewhere with the work he was producing that would be displayed publicly inside the cube as the conclusion to the event.  Sadly, however, a conclusion was never to come.

Sometime in the early afternoon on the eighth day the fire broke out.

Günter Hoffman had insisted on a secret door being installed in the wall of the cube that Werner knew about but could not be seen by the public.  It led under the false floor that surrounded the cube straight to an exit from the warehouse in case of just such an emergency.

There were only a couple of people milling about when the explosion happened.  Something in the pile of offerings thrown down to Werner had caught fire and blown up, throwing Werner across the cube, knocking him out when his head hit the hard concrete floor.  By the time the security guard had got down into the cube the smoke was already thick from the intense fire.  As he tried to drag Werner to safety through the forest of scaffold poles under the false floor, smoke was sucked in with them. They never made it.

Their path became obscured as they were enveloped by the thick smoke, which in the end killed them both.

The next day Addi went missing.

The Production Line of Happiness. Christopher Williams at the Whitechapel Gallery, London

Christopher Williams at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Well, this is one for the arterarty, and gets the heart of everything I hate about what we are told is 'art'. This is a significant exhibition - not in and of itself, but as an archetype of art that you need to have explained to you because you are not clever enough to get it without being told what you should be thinking.

I went to this exhibition with a good friend, not an artist, but someone who is interested in art and creativity in general. So to describe the experience, lets start at the beginning. You enter the Whitechapel Gallery, and see in front of you what is perhaps the entrance to the show, but where whatever signage you can perceive is half covered by green wallpaper, or some such similar material. But you are reassured by the sight of other people beyond the threshold, and on entering are handed a piece of paper by a gallery attendant, which is little aide to understanding what world of art you have walked into ( - is it perhaps just part of the exhibition?).

Now, I will admit to being something of an art extremist - a fundamentalist even - when it comes to the experience of art. I expect, no, demand! that art explain itself to me, that it communicates its ideas - as far as I'm concerned, that is the very nature of what art is: a form of communication. So when art is supplied with all kinds of explanatory cards and leaflets, boards with mini-theses on them to help explain to the poor observer what the hell it is all about, I am at once suspicious that the 'art' on show will in fact be nothing of the kind since it has failed in its only true task which is to communicate.

Thankfully, neither the piece of paper I and my friend were handed, nor the half covered words of titles and descriptions throughout the exhibition seemed to offer any explanation at all, so that was a relief. Instead, we were left with confusing half eaten reminiscences of the previous exhibition (presumably), in order to confuse us (again, presumably as I cannot fathom why else it would be done). What one might call the actual works of art are photographs. But what they are of, their significance or relevance to each other is not obvious, other than the occasional appearance of the same people, or of the same subject every now and then. I should say that as you go around, witnessing the half covered words of exhibition past, the walls are also unfinished, as if the partly torn down previous exhibit had left the gallery space in a curatorial/decorating limbo. There are walls with masking tape still attached, paint, pencil/pen marks, as well as some of the moveable walls themselves with one end left open so you can see inside these portable voids that have the photographs hanging on them.

All very arty; very deep; profound ;-)

So, now we are in. We look at the first photograph to our right, behind us as we enter, a young woman sitting on some kind of (outside?) covered swinging couch kinda thing - at least that's the impression I'm left with - with her breasts out, laughing heartily at... something. You turn round to face the portable wall behind you and there is a photograph of a tyre, what looks like a motorbike tyre to me, a quarter view of a large black rubber hole, on an indistinct whitish background. Behind and to the left of that, and also opposite the laughing girl, is another wall, but this time with a photograph of a large good looking chicken, or cock as my friend would have it. There were no title cards or anything to elucidate any understanding of what we were seeing, but my friend nevertheless quickly provided his own, combining the half naked woman, the hole, and the cock, into a suitable associative narrative.

We moved on a little further and my friend was entranced by one photograph of a yellow bowl held by its rim and immersed halfway into water - I could describe more details but I feel there is little point. It held an interest for my friend since it reminded him of patterns he enjoyed watching in his washing up bowl at home when the washing machine was on - a personal association which I was glad for him to have, bringing another little glimpse of content into the exhibition.

Up until this point, I have to say I was unimpressed. Much as I regard as laudable the lack of explanation at any point in the show, what you are left with is, I'm afraid, a bunch of not particularly interesting photographs hung in an unfinished exhibition space. I put this to my friend who started talking about the laughing girl/hole/cock thing, the washing machine, the photographs of other photographic equipment, quickly making up some narrative that was peppered with question marks as in: "Maybe it's about... or perhaps...?", and then grabbing hold of the photo's of a bunch of apples and a chestnut leaf, trying to shoehorn them into an explanation to make it make sense; and this is the nub of the problem. My friend was busy making up reasons for the works we were seeing, because there was no reason to be seen. He was trying to provide an explanation himself so as to not feel that his investment in coming to the exhibition had been wasted. This is an understandable response since one has faith in what one has learnt to call art. And much like tribal peoples in times gone by, all over the world, when something you have no explanation for - a hurricane, an erupting volcano, failed harvests - one makes up an explanation in order that one can feel safe again in a world where your assumptions of what is or is not have been turned upside-down. I pointed out to my friend that he was clearly trying to come up with his own reasons for what he was seeing, and once the point was put to him, he accepted that all the 'art' he was seeing was of his own creation, that the show wasn't actually telling him anything at all. I on the other hand, as I have said, am an extremist, a fundamentalist (artamentalist?). I do not believe something is art either because it is in a gallery or because someone tells me it is. I make up my own mind.

The exhibition started on the ground floor, and then continued upstairs in another two smaller rooms. My perception of what I was seeing was this: a lot of photographs, none of which were particularly special, some of which were more interesting than others, but not by much. Certainly, most were skilfully taken. A lot of the images of camera equipment were reminiscent of stock photography, ie. characterless, but descriptive, as were the tyres. There were two or three interesting images of camera lenses that had been cut through to reveal their inner workings. But of course, what is interesting about them is the subject and its complex engineering, not the image of it; the photograph itself holding no meaning whatsoever.

The subject matter in these photos was varied, and seemingly unconnected. There would be little point in me trying to engender them all with a theme or single idea, since there is none perceptible, unless, like my friend attempted before I stopped him, you create your own. Suffice it to say, as my friend an I descended the stairs at the end of the exhibition (the cast iron supports to the handrails being much more impressive than anything we had yet seen inside the gallery), we were both a little disappointed, though in truth I was far less impressed as my friend did at least 'like' some of the photographs. We got to the bottom of the stairs, and there on the wall was a small tv screen, with a video running - the explanation!

Now, this annoyed me almost instantly! Having gone through an unimpressive series of not very interesting photographs that purported to be art, we were now to be told why it was art. I watched for about 10 seconds before I could take it no more after the words left the lips of the presenter: "...which makes us think of..." HA! GOTCHA! That is the whole thing with this kind of 'art'. Here, after going through the whole show, we are now being TOLD WHAT WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IT, HOW IT SHOULD MAKE US FEEL... if that isn't our reaction it is we who are wrong! This made me furious so I quickly left for the bookshop so I didn't start ranting at my friend who was more interested than I and was watching it. But 30 seconds later he joined me in the bookshop, visibly annoyed. He was upset that the video, the explanation, had put him in a position whereby everything he had thought and felt about what he had seen, was in fact wrong. I am used to this, but I think perhaps he is not so. The result, upset. Whatever your reaction, if it is not the reaction we state it should be, you have became somehow inadequate, ill-arterate, ignorant, because you got it wrong.

This exhibition exhibited the worst example of conceptual art. It was so up its own fundament in terms of its reasons for being, and the reaction you 'should' have towards it, that it has become completely irrelevant to any normal person, anyone who isn't, not only versed in modern art concepts, but who completely buys into the façade, willingly leading themselves to the alter for sacrifice. And on top of all that, I found the photographs themselves dull.

Not a good show.


POSCRIPT

As an aside to my previously described hatred at being told what I should be thinking about art, I wish to relate to you a further experience we had in the gallery. As we left the exhibition, and found ourselves at the top of the stairs, I noticed another exhibition was on, a single room with a bunch of paintings inside. We went in to have a look. I described to my friend how this painting, painted in 1910, didn't impress me because it was actually painted quite badly, whatever else its limited merits were. And how this massive 'painting' was simply a waste of canvas - why? Because its depiction of some kind of bamboo and flower combination, childishly trying to confuse the eye into seeing figures, was simply a demonstration of an idea (as lots of contemporary art is) without actually trying to say anything at all, and on top of that it was painted extremely badly, executed as if the artist had only minutes to make it before they had to rush out to talk about art somewhere instead of actually making any. Perhaps a little weary of my refusal to accept something as art because I was being told it was, we briefly looked at everything else, a few quick words, including a video piece, which I had seen before, of a man dancing wildly on a grave to Jimi Hendrix - (both juvenile and another example of 'hey look at this - isn't it great?!', but not actually saying anything at all other than the artist has time on their hands), but there was one piece, a painting, that my friend had walked past having not really noticed it.

It wasn't that it was small, because it wasn't. It wasn't as big as the bamboo monstrosity, but you would need a large house with a large wall if you were going to have the space to hang it. It was a painting of sunflowers, in vases, on a table. So here's the thing. Not only are we told that we have to believe something is art because we are told that it is, that we shouldn't think for ourselves unless we are bad at arguing our own pint and so therefore can be easily beaten down and forced to agree to the arterarties perceptions (even if in our hearts we still don't), but the same thing happens with artist's names. A work by a given artist is 'good' or 'amazing', or 'powerful', or 'extraordinary', etc. etc. becuase it has that name attached to it - like magic! But then, take a famous name, an artist who my friend mentioned to me earlier in the day, so not someone he had never heard of; take one of their paintings and put it in a room. The result: it was ignored. I myself didn't recognise it for what it was immediately because, although I can now see its style is one I perhaps would have recognised had I paid it more immediate attention amongst the other bad, and some not so badly created art in that room, it actually looked a little... amateurish. People rave about this painter, but honestly, I don't think he's very good; I have never thought he was very good; I have always been left a little disappointed by his paintings. His images, their composition and colours (if you like something of a fauvist palette), are usually good, though not always interesting. But it's his ability with paint that always lets the work down. Sure, he's better than most out there today, but when your competition is so poor, and includes the likes of the exhibition we had gone to the gallery to see, it is little surprise that he is regarded as the UK's greatest living painter. Have you guessed who it is yet? This is the thing: once you know, you'll argue, because you know how good he really is, or at least you'll think you know, or maybe you'll know what other people have told you they think you should know. Step back. Step back from the name and look at what's in front of you. Does it work? Is is executed with due skill and diligence in order to amplify its expression? Is it, in short, any good, regardless of whether you actually like it or not? If you don't ask yourself these questions every time you look at ANY work of art, then you might as well listen to me as anyone else.

Who is the artist? I'll be awarding points for the correct answer. And what do points mean? Well, that depends on your definition of a point, the way you spell it, its context, the environment it was brought up in, the person who uttered the words and/or invented the concept of pointing or prizes or applying an abstract notion of reward for the sake of personal gratification...

Picasso & Giacometti - art is dead, again...

So. If you want to buy a Picasso and a Giacometti, it'll set you back over £200,000,000. £200 million pounds!! Really?!  REALLY???

Women of Algiers. Pablo Picasso, 1954

At the height of these new found extremes, it is very tempting to declare art dead, once and for all. But why?  People have been saying that for decades, centuries even. But this time, it's not the art that's the problem, it's what it's been turned into. By paying such huge sums, the value of the art has, conversely, been reduced to almost nothing.  Sure, people can study them, from pictures in a book, from postcards and posters, even in exhibtions if they ever see the public light of day again, where you will have the chance to jostle with those other poor bastards who have paid their weekly wage to enter an exhibition cramned so full of others that to see the painting itself becomes impossible, and of course, the exhibition will be hailed a great success because of the money brought in by the hype created around the quantity of cash paid for them. But the reality is more likely to be that they are hidden away, in some palace somewhere, maybe somewhere in the UAE, or perhaps an oligarchs fiefdom in esatern Europe - no one knows, or is ever likely to; its happened before, and will happen again.

These works of art have now been transformed into nothing more than commodities.  The value of their art is forgotten, is irrelevent, is beside the point; their monetary worth is now all that counts. What was once nothing more than a couple of hundred pounds worth of oil paint, canvas and wood, has been supersized; what was once a few hundred pounds woth of cast bronze, someone on an average wage in the UK would have to work for 342 years to buy.

These works come from a golden age of western art, a golden age far superior to that of the renaissance. They came out of a time where the notion of art being a literal description of the world had been pushed aside, favouring instead an interpretive idea that it is the artist's perception of the world that was important. This saw so many wonderful things happen, new ideas, new formats, new ways to see, but its very birth engendered its death, exemplified by Marcel Duchamp.

Man Pointing. Alberto Giacometti, 1947

Forget, for a moment, all the hyperbole you have been taught to know about Duchamp. Look at him. He was a man who painted, and became disatisfied with his work as his intellect took over his heart. Soon after fine art took that magnificent break away from depicting a literal reality, Duchamp came to the conclusion (and he was not the first to do so), that art had been subjugated by its value - ie it's monetary value came to supercede its artistic value. This is nothing new. But being who he was, something of a nihilist (an attitude I have some sympathy for), he used his intellectual prowess to destroy the notion of art once and for all with his work Fountain: a urinal, placed on its back, and signed with the made up name R. Mutt. Art meant nothing any more, only the perception of art mattered. But this had in fact always been the case. Most people don't care very much about art, what it can do for you, how it can help you discover more about the world, about your own perceptions of it, and more importantly, how others percieve it, in order to broaden your outlook of the world and people around you, to understand and build better relationships, better societies, better lives for all of us. But that notion has long since been buried beneath the self, the me me me: the value is only what is valuable to me and fuck anyone else. We live in a very selfish world where everything is reduce to monetary value, and nothing is maintained that cannot prove its worth on the economists balance sheet.

Art has gone through many stages: used to gratify your chosen deity, seen as no more that something you 'like', similarly decalred to be only worthy of its title if it 'challenges' you - being something you positively don't like, and now it is simply that which can command the greatest quantity of cash. There is no such thing as art anymore, or perhaps there never was. Maybe art was always a fools paradise, where those with feelings they were only able to express through the creation of objects could justify their painful existence through their physical accomplishments, and those around them accepted their efforts in order to rationalise their continued presence in the society they all lived in together as it gave them some succour to know that perhaps there was something 'other' in the world of humans that was not monopolised by the faith merchants. It was something real, concrete, created by a person they could identify, for real. But regardles of those romantic ideals the goal is now money. The living excamplar of this, Damien Hurst, has done exactly that. Turning his pseudo art into cash as if Midas touching gold, except when he actually tried to paint something and came up with appalling teenage 'i want to be Francis Bacon' painitngs which no one would miss if they were never seen again.

So where are we now? Of course, the Picasso and Gacometti are not 'worth' over £200 million pounds. Their monetary value is an aberation. But since they are unlikely ever to be seen again, their artistic value is as if a negative of the price paid. You will gain nothing from them any more since you will never see them. And even if you did, the security and hype surrounding their presence will destroy any notion of the art they contain, as you are herded, like cattle to the slaughter, to worship the price paid for canvas, paint, and a lump of metal.

There are still people that believe in art, but i have no faith in my societies perception of what art is, and these sales only strengthen my disbelief. Art should be seen, or else it is worthless. So perhaps I should thank my lucky stars that my art, my paintings, do not, and never will sell for nearly a milleniums worth of paid work.

What is Art, anyway? 10 art recipes from the Notebooks of Arnold Tuppley - out now on kindle

What is Art, anyway?
available now on kindle

What is art, anyway? A good question, though ridiculous too since the accepted response nowadays is that art is anything that someone happens to think it is, if they bother to think it is anything at all. But for me, that is not enough.

In the 1990's I was a young man, and a painter, observing everywhere I looked the sudden and overwhelming fashion for conceptual art. But I could never square those artworks with what I did, to see them as the same thing. The tipping point came when I went to an exhibition with a few friends, lots of object type art, conceptual and pretty uninteresting. While I and the others went round the show, one of my friends, who shall remain nameless, spent the time looking at a fire extinguisher secured to the wall. He checked it carefully, top and bottom, both sides too, putting in a lot of effort to wring out every last drop of artistic merit from this work of art. After he had finished his careful observance, he then looked for the title card, something to tell him what is was, what he was meant to think about it, and who made it. But there was a problem: there was no title card; it was a fire extinguisher; it was for putting out fires, and as such was perfectly happy. But in this context it lacked something, something that every other object had to justify their place in the show: an artist. Ridiculous though it may sound, it is a true story. I knew then that there was something other in conceptual art, something that in no way related to the paintings I was doing.

Years later, and with conceptual art riding high as the predominant art-form thanks to Charles Saatchi and the now not so Young British Artists, it became apparent to me that nearly all of what they produced was not actually made by them at all, but was made by skilled craftsmen, engineers, all kinds of artisans whose skill was used to realise their artist's visions. The artist became something akin to a designer, a producer/director, and it was therefore clear, when looking at many of these works, that there had to be a set of instructions somewhere for the makers to follow. In short, there had to be a recipe.

And once you have cottoned on to that fact, seeing these things makes you realise how once the idea is there, the concept created, there is no need for any further artistic input. What art there is in the piece must necessarily lie in the idea behind it, and not in the object, so what does it matter who actually makes it? If someone else buys a shark, and pays the same company to build a large glass tank to house it in, immersed in formaldehyde, what is the actual artistic difference between you doing it and Damien Hirst? In my view, if the art is conceptual, then whoever makes it is irrelevant.

Well, you may or may not agree, and it's not an argument I really have any interest in pursuing as such, but what I am interested in is the idea of creating works of art, conceptual works of art, but not to make myself. After all, once the concept is conceived, the art is there; making it physical is simply a matter of manufacture.

So I decided to write a book, a book of art recipes for anyone to follow, for anyone to make. But to bring them into context there had to be a story, something that creates the context, for each recipe, and for the idea as a whole.

The full story of Arnold Tuppley and the many deaths and murders that characterised the last two years of his life is a finished novel as yet unpublished. But the recipe book, the original idea, is now out on kindle for everyone to see, at the blisteringly fine price of only £1.99.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Art-anyway-recipes-notebooks-ebook/dp/B00PUHEXVA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1416568291&sr=1-1

Whether you are interested or not in art, I hope at least that the stories will entertain you. Some might think the art a joke, and others not; all I can say is, that as with the very notion of art itself nowadays, it is whatever you think it is.

From the introduction to

What is Art, Anyway? 10 art recipes from the notebooks of Arnold Tuppley

The art recipe, as we now know it, owes its existence to the rare talent and traumatic life of Arnold Tuppley. It was Arnold Tuppley who reduced conceptual art to a simple set of instruction for anyone to follow without losing any of its artistic merit, and who alongside Marco Chillds created LIBERART to disseminate those works, the initial catalogue of which came from the notebooks Tuppley diligently maintained, and which I had the privilege of studying before they were handed over to the police.

We will not be looking at the life of Arnold Tuppley himself, many of the details of which you are no doubt aware of through the salacious reporting that surrounded his death – no, that is for another time. What we shall examine is some of the most important questions that art has to answer through the recipes Tuppley collected, which not only serve to elucidate the true remit of art, but also to follow the thinking of the man whose efforts helped redefine the art-world, and whom we can thank for the many works of art that are even now being re-created across the world, for new audiences, and new generations. Of course, in some cases that necessarily means delving into the troubled months before he died, the deaths of the Weisse twins, and the murder of Zara Friese, but only insofar as they pertain to the works themselves.

Some of the recipes he created himself it would not be appropriate to print, such as his legendary Bad Egg, highly toxic but beautiful, which should you be fool enough to eat would certainly kill you; or his last recipe of all, The Artist and The Damned, which drew his life to a dramatic, and public, conclusion. But I hope these omissions and the troubles he experienced don’t overtake the importance of his role in proliferating the art recipe as an exciting and powerful format, which is a legacy that any one of us, leading a full, long, and happy life, would be proud of, and is indeed a fitting epitaph for the self-denied artist – Arnold Tuppley.

Cedey Codray - Harvest

Cedey Codray is not a name that springs to mind when confronted with a room full of art whose primary material is that which can be harvested from the human body.  But perhaps his previous diatribes, railing against the art establishment as well as his view that most artists are lazy and unimaginative, can give us a clue as to the reasons for his latest exhibition 'Harvest'.

One might imagine, on reading the press release for this show which states "Codray enjoys the gathering of materials to make his work almost as much as making the work itself, cultivating his crops with great care and attention to detail to ensure the perfect outcome for his art..." that we might be looking at some kind of vegetable sculptures, or maybe grass weaving or an examination of different soils that kill crops or enliven them, causing famine in some parts of the world, and feast in others.  But no.  That is not his style.

The central piece in the show is mounted on a plinth in the middle of the gallery.  Two glass cases stand next to each other, separated by about an inch of clear space.  Inside each case is a cast of Codray's head, but each has a slightly different colour, a subtle variant of off-white, and on closer inspection, they also have a slightly different texture.  One of them is a little yellowish, and perhaps crumbling a bit, its surface pocked marked with the signs of deterioration giving the impression that if you were only to touch its surface that away would come the detail of Codray's skin; the other, is whiter, and harder, at least in the places where it is not stained by the transgression of the pollutant that has been incorporated into the material.  At their closest point, the facing sides of the cases are open, leaving clear space between the two heads, facing each other, nose to nose, as if each is inviting the other in to their domain, but neither is willing to make the first move.  It isn't a challenge, it isn't violent, their glass cubicles are open, their expressions ambivalent, though slightly different, since it is clear that the casts are not duplicates, but from different moulds.

So as I look at this piece, and briefly read the title 'Dirty Twins', I wonder about the dirt.  They do both look dirty, it is true, but in different ways.  Then, all of a sudden, the title of the exhibition itself combines with the title of the work, and the faint whiff of latrine, and I look again at the label to try and find out a little more.  And there it is.  The subtitle is "Piss-Head:Shit-Head" and the materials used read... well you can guess that they entail an incorporation of Codray's waste products.  But despite ones immediate reaction to such a juvenile approach to art creation, I could not help wondering about that gap between the two cases, and the sub title.

Codray's reputation as a drinker and, to put it politely, his lack of interest in the niceties of normal discourse when a sufficiency of alcohol is in his system, I was already aware of having met an old friend (or more accurately an ex- old friend) of his at an unrelated show a couple of months ago.  And so the concept of dualism, the Jekyll and Hyde complex, the loving friend and hated drunk, is brought into the foreground and I quickly realise that what I am looking at is not some facile attempt at re-imagining Marc Quinn's poetic, if overdone, blood head, but is in fact a self portrait.  He takes a drink, he takes another, and another, and another, he is a piss-head, for want of a more literary phrase, he can't help himself, he likes to drink.  And then the transformation begins, he becomes loud and abusive, revealing secrets of his friends, cursing his lover, rounding on anyone who doesn't let his ego rampage across the room; he becomes the shit-head.  The two heads are inextricably linked: the one is the cause of the other.  And what better way to demonstrate the literality of these states of mind than with his own waste, his urine mixed in with the plaster for one, causing the texture to alter from that of the usual hard casting one would otherwise expect, and the “mashed up faeces” as described by the title label, to exemplify the result of his addiction, leaving dirty, stained streaks of shit across the surface of his face, a well as our imagination seeing the pollutant cast in seams of filth through the whole head.

It is quite a disgusting piece once you realise what you are looking at, but powerful, and accurate, and by far the best piece in the show.  There is really only one other work worth any real consideration.  But first we walk past 'Can', another replica object, but this time of a drinks can, and not cast out of plaster, but made of papier-mâché forced into a mould made of the can of a well known soft drink manufacturer, papier-mâché that was made with wallpaper paste, and, you've guessed it, toilet paper, and yes, you're right again, used toilet paper.  One's mind boggles at the processes he must have gone through to create such a piece, and then moves on quickly realising that to dwell on such a revolting series of processes would certainly put me off my lunch.  But the use to which the toilet paper was put is obvious for all to see, and I am sure there was a slight taint in the air as I moved on to 'Blood Bank'.

'Blood Bank' is a wall-mounted piece.  No waste products were used in its creation, but instead he uses his blood.  "The extracted blood," the label alongside informs us, "is mixed with gelatine and poured into square moulds before leaving in the fridge to set overnight."  It's jelly then.  "The result is a form of lightly elastic blood red movement which brings to the possibility of coagulation during storage," it's jelly, right? "and defines anew the notion of blood as food-stuff."  Right.  It is jelly.  Blood jelly.  Now, I like the idea of blood jelly.  Not to eat necessarily, but to wobble.  Blood is a good colour, a deep dark red, one of the best colours, and always gets a reaction.  And jelly?  Well, jelly's fun, it wobbles, that's always fun!  But on this occasion, it's not so fun.  You don't get to wobble the jelly.  The 170 blood-jelly cubes are mounted on a white board that is framed and hung on the wall, like a painting.  They are arranged very neatly in a square, 13 by 13, with the central space missing.  But by now, you will have got the impression of beautiful blood red cubes arranged neatly on the wall, drawing you attention to the role blood is meant to play when exposed to the air, to coagulate and stop the flow of any more blood from a cut on your body, so you don't die from loss of blood.  But no.  These cubes aren't the hard beautiful blood red sculptures you imagine, but sag slightly, under their own weight.  And on top of top of that, just to destroy and possible beauty they may have had once upon a time, they have clearly been left out of the fridge for quite a while, and have been encouraged to grow a thick garden of moulds.  The coverage of mould on the cubes is uneven, but green and white, as one would imagine, a little hairy, and quite unappetising.  But is does make for a more interesting piece than simply displaying perfect dark red squares would have been.  Indeed, one is left with the impression of the impermanence of the bloods use once it has left the owners body.  Blood, where it should not be, is not much use, other that as food for moulds, or animals.  And I think of the blood banks as a network of depositories across the country, all reliant on the fridges and freezers that keep them usable and safe from deterioration.  What would happen if the lights went out, the fridges turned off, how long would it be before the only use any of that blood could be put to is as art, or food?  How long do we have?  Weeks?  Days?  Hours?

We live by a thread in our comfortable western palace of convenience, where gathering food means walking to the end of the road to the nearest shop, where diseases are cured as easily they kill in other parts of the world, where an accident, that had the ambulance arrived only ten minutes later, would have seen Cedey Codray dead from blood loss, but instead he survived, thanks to the paramedics skill and the blood they carried with them, which inspired the creation of this piece of mouldy art.

I will pass on describing the piss paintings, and semen stained adverts culled from magazines and newspapers to draw attention to the overt sexuality employed to sell... almost anything.  They are not that interesting, or artistic in my view.  But 'Piss-head:Shit-Head' stays with me as I leave the gallery, and the thought of the black pudding I had in a café that morning leaves me feeling a little uneasy as I head off for lunch.

Roundhouse Gallery, Coventry, till December 13th.