tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-361132932024-03-08T00:39:34.518+00:00Tom PhillipsNews and updates by the artist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-48615266393022402792012-05-18T09:43:00.001+01:002012-05-18T09:54:49.032+01:00Last PostThis blog has moved, you can now find us at <a href="http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/studio-blog">http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/studio-blog</a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmcV8ZNBLxrlESj32Gl0vZ2s4W7cg3m2px555XdqQRCMzTjhhtcjeFyS49St_dPB5o8ARdR1MUNg8KLRiQ-0mEjGADEYkcJ_O2KCfWVzP3hk_qja0uPKwycMyl2tzEYZ9P6vnx/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-05-18+at+09.22.03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmcV8ZNBLxrlESj32Gl0vZ2s4W7cg3m2px555XdqQRCMzTjhhtcjeFyS49St_dPB5o8ARdR1MUNg8KLRiQ-0mEjGADEYkcJ_O2KCfWVzP3hk_qja0uPKwycMyl2tzEYZ9P6vnx/s320/Screen+shot+2012-05-18+at+09.22.03.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-36011139252040377492012-04-27T12:55:00.003+01:002012-04-27T13:38:19.004+01:00News<i>Heart of Darkness</i> is nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award. Something to (Melvyn) Bragg about. In the opera category we are bitterly pitted against Hector Berlioz in a lavish (and brilliant) production of <i>The</i> <i>Damnation of Faust</i> by my old friend Terry Gilliam. O'Regan versus Berlioz: it's a tough draw. You will hear about it if we win, but expect silence. At least I can look forward on Tuesday 1st May at the Dorchester ceremony to raising a glass as old Hector B shuffles up to Melvyn to accept the prize...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvkXZf6JTIGe37ppTIc0h9SERPeqDa3OZBvx-YGERK2C5JmjCmEPn4t8xa8kIWjyZNoJxaj8_u7wDX-VkwlL3f8K7AHXDbXU1UzQGHvYuzSCzvWyOlT5HQ4JnJeGSfmJ2U4vE0pg/s1600/Heart-of-Darkness-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvkXZf6JTIGe37ppTIc0h9SERPeqDa3OZBvx-YGERK2C5JmjCmEPn4t8xa8kIWjyZNoJxaj8_u7wDX-VkwlL3f8K7AHXDbXU1UzQGHvYuzSCzvWyOlT5HQ4JnJeGSfmJ2U4vE0pg/s400/Heart-of-Darkness-007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #666666; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Alan Oke (Marlow) and Njabulo Madlala (Thames Captain) in Heart of Darkness.</span></div>
<br />
A new website, handsomely styled and edited by Lucy Shortis and Steve Xerri, will appear soon and incorporate this blog. Information to follow: watch this space: do not adjust your set.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-68447313502803090182012-02-20T13:27:00.000+00:002012-05-18T09:17:04.268+01:00Seventy Fifth Birthday News<style>
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} -->
</style> <br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16px;">Seventy fifth birthday looming up and a small self fest to celebrate. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The new and updated <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Humument-Treated-Victorian-Novel/dp/0500290431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329740771&sr=8-1" target="_blank">5th edition</a> of A Humument will be published by Thames & Hudson on 24<sup>th</sup> May.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
24<sup>th</sup> May (the birthday itself) is also varnishing day at the RA where I’ll be showing tennis balls and 5 new prints in the Summer Exhibition. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
25<sup>th</sup> May going local again with a substantial exhibition namely of prints at <a href="http://www.gxgallery.com/" target="_blank">GX Gallery</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On 26<sup>th</sup> a show of new work will open at <a href="http://www.flowersgalleries.com/about/" target="_blank">Flowers East</a>.<br />
<br />
Will be doing a reading from <i>A Humument</i> at <a href="http://www.reviewbookshop.co.uk/" target="_blank">Review</a> Bookshop on 30<sup>th</sup> May. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91kTblGxRSBzQUL2SrIWOFeK2nSiCC7jFkDo3TjkHOsTHrJ6WfNjOJ7uYRKRQvPzuVTxjMf6GUktb7mbXW5mC5D5mDtfAet0lnWr4I8mhaJfts9ODkCYVyntpBYyaFjfG2eJF/s1600/blogpastels-20.2.12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91kTblGxRSBzQUL2SrIWOFeK2nSiCC7jFkDo3TjkHOsTHrJ6WfNjOJ7uYRKRQvPzuVTxjMf6GUktb7mbXW5mC5D5mDtfAet0lnWr4I8mhaJfts9ODkCYVyntpBYyaFjfG2eJF/s320/blogpastels-20.2.12.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the Flowers show I seem to be in the middle of a group of a dozen or so pastels. Pastels again, yes. Somehow I find myself in tune with paper and charcoal and chalk and pastel and especially with the rubbing out of same, working backwards, erasing away, letting the paper do the white work… more like finding a sculpture inside a messy bit of wood; subtracting, getting rid of, carving back.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zhGUHa7jA2h22yNVh9bHSCSGW-1VqaEUzm7IAqZdKkbApsLECuD86D2D0fYYMMog1IHsckXkO5yCM6e2EJ42R5l6iiR9BNMp7361k3EumVaecI5hIR3mP71OmTKz2eAEneI-/s1600/how+it+ended-id1880-2012-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zhGUHa7jA2h22yNVh9bHSCSGW-1VqaEUzm7IAqZdKkbApsLECuD86D2D0fYYMMog1IHsckXkO5yCM6e2EJ42R5l6iiR9BNMp7361k3EumVaecI5hIR3mP71OmTKz2eAEneI-/s320/how+it+ended-id1880-2012-blog.jpg" width="243" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>How it Ended Up</i>, Pastel, 2012, h61cm x w46cm</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also on birthday number 75, an update to <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ahumumentapp-foriphone/id412430349?mt=8" target="_blank">A Humument App</a> for iPad and iPhone comes out on iTunes, and a brand new, redesigned Tom Phillips website will be launched (more about that soon). In the following week I shall be on the road again for the fortieth sampling of <a href="http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/sculptur/20sites/index.html" target="_blank">20 Sites n Years</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Blog readers are invited to the private view of my show at GX Gallery, Camberwell on the 25<sup>th</sup> May, and the opening at Flowers East on the 26<sup>th</sup> May. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope to bump into all three of you at one or the other of these events.</div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-29695398284022600662011-12-13T19:16:00.001+00:002011-12-13T19:17:48.864+00:00Shameless Christmas Marketing Plug from our sponsors...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8JkO4YN3wzg1WxsFORWagNC_XYrPBepxVixXynKlUn_mzkW7ld3TUOR14eJ8gsJFFZK3W-LzLSQIF1EQYHk5wfjWhQBBuA0kSA4eUZG1HOEHOu2XN6-u182M-Z2hFxIDw9Uqk/s1600/loving-600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8JkO4YN3wzg1WxsFORWagNC_XYrPBepxVixXynKlUn_mzkW7ld3TUOR14eJ8gsJFFZK3W-LzLSQIF1EQYHk5wfjWhQBBuA0kSA4eUZG1HOEHOu2XN6-u182M-Z2hFxIDw9Uqk/s320/loving-600.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
We can't absolutely guarantee to get it to you before Christmas but, here's a special offer valid until the end of the year. Choose two from the new selection of six humument fragments available now from <a href="http://57talfourd.com/">57talfourd.com</a> and we will give you a third humument fragment print free of charge - if you buy before 31st December. Just fill in your third choice in the message field in Paypal. Go on, knock yourself out. Happy Christmas.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-15064753200252250942011-12-13T18:49:00.000+00:002011-12-13T18:49:17.641+00:00Heart of Darkness and A Humument fifth edition<style>
@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkS6KhWaETn7zr9kLIHBkRnRxGsZ9STkAm4dd4XRqObO8lXQ9ZzgLPK8xWDcoUsb7FMnmNCyujcZunyLMZBO33jt2mQhJHerEmGjUUvcw_np1kjfNUO1aqL_AaIqazXbPUGs2-/s1600/2504ashm_247+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkS6KhWaETn7zr9kLIHBkRnRxGsZ9STkAm4dd4XRqObO8lXQ9ZzgLPK8xWDcoUsb7FMnmNCyujcZunyLMZBO33jt2mQhJHerEmGjUUvcw_np1kjfNUO1aqL_AaIqazXbPUGs2-/s320/2504ashm_247+copy.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photograph Catherine Ashmore</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><i><br />
</i></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Heart of Darkness</i> was premiered with some success at Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre. Reviews were generally enthusiastic about Tarik’s richly inventive score as well as the staging and set, the excellent band and the strong cast (especially Alan Oke as Marlow). Many reviewers also singled out for a mention (as does not always happen) that shadowy operatic drudge, the librettist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">Herewith a link to the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/nov/06/heart-darkness-tarik-oregan-review" target="_blank">Observer</a>’s account (not on this occasion by their chief critic since one cannot be blown by one’s own strumpet) and one from that independent and often contentious blogger who sidles to his seat under the name of <a href="http://georgios1978.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/conrad-at-the-opera/" target="_blank">operacreep</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">Tarik and I gave talks before the shows and it was he that pointed out that the first email exchange about the project was in 2002. Not quite ten years before the mast but a long haul. It already seems unlikely that this will be our last collaboration.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">With the opera launched, <a href="http://www.foliosociety.com/book/ORA/cicero-orations" target="_blank"><i>Cicero</i></a> published, and the <a href="http://www.royalmint.com/olympicgames/London-2012-kilo-coins.aspx" target="_blank">Olympic Coin</a> minted, time for fresh woods and pastures new: in this case to join those who have stumbled at the wide brooks and the high fences of translating Rilke. But this is an even longer venture hoping to have text and pictures for all the <i>Duino Elegies</i> (which the loftiest poet of the 20th century started in 1912) ready in a couple of years.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">Meanwhile, the longest term of all my projects, <i>A Humument</i> heads for its fifth revised edition in the New Year. I have written a new introduction that has now come through a protracted battle with copy editors who do not like semi-colons. There are more than fifty newly revised pages. Although these were delivered with the introduction to Thames & Hudson only last week, the book has already appeared on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Humument-Treated-Victorian-Novel/dp/0500289999/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1323437910&sr=8-7" target="_blank">Amazon</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkQQlxq_Hb76bGmPPn7UOzMG-LKYLeKWb6LnVEI12EX-_o5GNaRoswPtOLa2vees5Ui-CJxjjiHoqSfrabWQu2jKnyx7s4OsL9qwwDXJ8N_XX95dndCAUFNrswO6ggyoJzdEV/s1600/Humument+FRONT+2012-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkQQlxq_Hb76bGmPPn7UOzMG-LKYLeKWb6LnVEI12EX-_o5GNaRoswPtOLa2vees5Ui-CJxjjiHoqSfrabWQu2jKnyx7s4OsL9qwwDXJ8N_XX95dndCAUFNrswO6ggyoJzdEV/s320/Humument+FRONT+2012-blog.jpg" width="226" /></a></div></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-20661372486119082322011-11-25T13:29:00.001+00:002011-11-25T13:31:22.365+00:00Coin for the Olympics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJqs7iqOhPDeyUDDcG8RGMPaEyR1KKZnxBa49atEHbdqsYaNr3fs7plpO3krDIzEcyBkpHq_LDe8KuSmLvnjknfM9S5PLRKXvF3U2uwydqGjBbJtfE6-mr9l2vOJWXPSPMrC6s/s1600/olympic+kilo-id1847-2011-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJqs7iqOhPDeyUDDcG8RGMPaEyR1KKZnxBa49atEHbdqsYaNr3fs7plpO3krDIzEcyBkpHq_LDe8KuSmLvnjknfM9S5PLRKXvF3U2uwydqGjBbJtfE6-mr9l2vOJWXPSPMrC6s/s320/olympic+kilo-id1847-2011-blog.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><div style="color: #444444; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Design for 2012 Olympics Silver kilo coin, 2011, watercolour.</span></div><br />
Gutted by yet again being passed over for a place in our Olympics table tennis team I had resigned myself to having no role in the 2012 Olympiad. A phone call from Kevin Clancy at the Royal Mint changed all that, with a request to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/nov/23/olympic-one-kilo-coins-unveiled" target="_blank">design a silver coin</a> (face value £500) weighting a kilo to celebrate the games. Thus I was paired with Tony Caro who was making a gold coin of the same weight in the novel Olympic event of synchronised coin stamping. Luckily the theme of my own design was team sports which let me off the business of the inevitable action images of multicultural sportspersons. Apart from a drawn out dispute as to whether it was XXX Olympiad or Olympiad XXX, in which I came out the loser, all went smoothly.<br />
<br />
The coin features bunting (which as a wartime child always signifies to me a mood of celebration) to form a sun and, in negative, a multiple Olympic flame. This motif is surrounded by a verse I made to recall the original ideal of the games UNITE OUR DREAMS TO MAKE THE WORLD A TEAM OF TEAMS. Obliged to incorporate the ghastly logo of the London Olympiad I managed to shrink it to the size of the full stop which punctuates the text.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipbHdyn7TUhr3ENr9MBcuLbxnfeEzNwSduLUTS0Zje-pL-GomijtVLBEcG46o7HlrQ2tnwBgRaVXiMNAegBra8cV6mvqM6qa6wGnbOwcYGbSeiRkagb2HA0gGYOOrxJRCAOSp_/s1600/reverse2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipbHdyn7TUhr3ENr9MBcuLbxnfeEzNwSduLUTS0Zje-pL-GomijtVLBEcG46o7HlrQ2tnwBgRaVXiMNAegBra8cV6mvqM6qa6wGnbOwcYGbSeiRkagb2HA0gGYOOrxJRCAOSp_/s320/reverse2.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7e7WCzpMMcxr-pivsVHBGUTr6r2LFqTmDZPbT-zCNwhdXvGyzi-7hSUJH7HnAIGe-eqjw6RWlvPXppjj4qSpGtqvCg3RVCI1IAiru0FUz7wc1GzSoWdsEEg84HS4t1eIfVwg9/s1600/obverse1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7e7WCzpMMcxr-pivsVHBGUTr6r2LFqTmDZPbT-zCNwhdXvGyzi-7hSUJH7HnAIGe-eqjw6RWlvPXppjj4qSpGtqvCg3RVCI1IAiru0FUz7wc1GzSoWdsEEg84HS4t1eIfVwg9/s320/obverse1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLj_3ZwZFiWpcDld7SddMIuW91irTd54CgIZMqAxNmx2ECE-CYZRBZ9h_VRaHRnZRltq2pHteDIh6xIrIJK4k5KDexUy-G-9IVeoNkaLpclTZMZRKuHJWS2MacOyxDWXkhDyYX/s1600/Royal-Mint-One-kilo-gold-and-silver-coins-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLj_3ZwZFiWpcDld7SddMIuW91irTd54CgIZMqAxNmx2ECE-CYZRBZ9h_VRaHRnZRltq2pHteDIh6xIrIJK4k5KDexUy-G-9IVeoNkaLpclTZMZRKuHJWS2MacOyxDWXkhDyYX/s320/Royal-Mint-One-kilo-gold-and-silver-coins-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #444444; font-size: xx-small;">Sir Anthony Caro and Tom Phillips, 2012, photo David Parry.</span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJhiBDxOW8V5aQj3rtL5W8ZtVmP0uLISp4KQGI5EP49vPzViORIXODBT0yRST2_-vkfnPh9cBCE0YaEbNTA6a7KpiMZXsQxIe-GDiCArEOstxRYD2tgEkYVg1x-H4_F9X0KKN/s1600/Royal-Mint-One-kilo-gold-and-silver-coins-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJhiBDxOW8V5aQj3rtL5W8ZtVmP0uLISp4KQGI5EP49vPzViORIXODBT0yRST2_-vkfnPh9cBCE0YaEbNTA6a7KpiMZXsQxIe-GDiCArEOstxRYD2tgEkYVg1x-H4_F9X0KKN/s320/Royal-Mint-One-kilo-gold-and-silver-coins-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-87759852014316146802011-08-30T16:39:00.000+01:002011-08-30T16:39:56.807+01:00Cicero<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXT4rNlXa_cLrxqfxSC5imQoXsPVCcXIiexV1pDQvU_2lFKOFLrUjL3F_3n0ml93RTVjClUQnY-j5dXHTtm8JMwiXvFATALghbNEzhEqKMhhbKZ3c3uMnMgHUizBb4Eq8NRsyd/s1600/CICERO+cover-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXT4rNlXa_cLrxqfxSC5imQoXsPVCcXIiexV1pDQvU_2lFKOFLrUjL3F_3n0ml93RTVjClUQnY-j5dXHTtm8JMwiXvFATALghbNEzhEqKMhhbKZ3c3uMnMgHUizBb4Eq8NRsyd/s320/CICERO+cover-blog.jpg" width="188" /></a></div> <br />
When you meet someone you haven't encountered for sixty years you shouldn't be surprised to find them changed utterly. So it is in my case with Tully, as Marcus Tullius Cicero was always referred to by our classics master. I well remember the long feared exposure of my shaky grasp of Latin when singled out to stand up in class to read out and translate a tortuous paragraph from the Orations.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR99WX0lcCnLjUfbiQaJUQBNxldX0tSRNOzEog7y63q0hfG4ioHFuzHIEEVHg4NLOKrsCtdOOy4NfUgFx1XFCokIs_tZSKs8FmFtWldwpZPZJuW2Ra0pafjJGHIy3BS9l74D1Y/s1600/Pro+Roscio-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR99WX0lcCnLjUfbiQaJUQBNxldX0tSRNOzEog7y63q0hfG4ioHFuzHIEEVHg4NLOKrsCtdOOy4NfUgFx1XFCokIs_tZSKs8FmFtWldwpZPZJuW2Ra0pafjJGHIy3BS9l74D1Y/s320/Pro+Roscio-blog.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><br />
Almost a caricature of pedagogic dryness this teacher never once hinted at Virgil's epic swagger or let on that Horace was a cunning and sexy satirist. They were there, it seemed, to show that Latin was horrible and hard; with Tully the toughest of the bunch.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8J6M2-1XPPF-zBAzQ6epOepqJn54_uYQvXvW2PcRDZP3X7nRhQGixJnoqH2eIrb-YtiJM-b3vNrCbJ_HI5Hv-kYZmpfHkYF1IhWw56GiSuqpgIDlGfEtAnuQ8cDtImSrkIC_/s1600/Pro+Archio-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8J6M2-1XPPF-zBAzQ6epOepqJn54_uYQvXvW2PcRDZP3X7nRhQGixJnoqH2eIrb-YtiJM-b3vNrCbJ_HI5Hv-kYZmpfHkYF1IhWw56GiSuqpgIDlGfEtAnuQ8cDtImSrkIC_/s320/Pro+Archio-blog.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><br />
Horace and Virgil yielded to later reading but the idea of revisiting Cicero was like being summoned once more to stand outside the headmaster's door, awaiting reprimand or punishment.<br />
<br />
The opposite, as Cicero himself might have said, would prove to be the case. Having riskily agreed to accompany some of the Orations with pictures (illustrations doesn't somehow seem to be the right word) I plunged anew into the once detested text.<br />
<br />
I was amazed to find that today was two thousand years old. Same cast, same evils. The knuckle-rapping invective sometimes read like a rediscovered Pompeian copy of <i>Private Eye</i>: only the barmy army of religionists was missing. All the crime, corruption and political skulduggery of the age of Bush and Blair was well matched. In the Rome of today, the outrageous Silvio Berlusconi whose lifestyle and morality as a statesman were pre-echoed blemish for blemish in the Philippics against Mark Anthony.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFvfMejC_dcXtqnRn8liMRQzS2tlGXOH3OFuGbcZLWfpsHHjWOfhCllUsJzdIkh5YPJOnzyCwFkIgVwXx1CEQQQESfzLvYMyKh1k8QxRFxM4O2czqowxIBGWbVjcCpBceUjcS/s1600/Philippic-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFvfMejC_dcXtqnRn8liMRQzS2tlGXOH3OFuGbcZLWfpsHHjWOfhCllUsJzdIkh5YPJOnzyCwFkIgVwXx1CEQQQESfzLvYMyKh1k8QxRFxM4O2czqowxIBGWbVjcCpBceUjcS/s320/Philippic-blog.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><br />
Dissatisfied with the translations that I looked at I found my dim Latin was just enough to illuminate the wit and invention of the prose and to recognise all those verbal strategies of orators I have heard in my lifetime, from Churchill to Obama.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfOrbVcu1qN79jyO3nMgpfTJXGekjYRM8aGtTwQ8R2prxzTiWdf__av1ZW5c96CCciErDCNTK2CJwqKOUwdus1YtSJDdJ-nEOTcgeD7xNR6D0AeV9utSpVRnje5ZDdu_kZHrB_/s1600/appian+road-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfOrbVcu1qN79jyO3nMgpfTJXGekjYRM8aGtTwQ8R2prxzTiWdf__av1ZW5c96CCciErDCNTK2CJwqKOUwdus1YtSJDdJ-nEOTcgeD7xNR6D0AeV9utSpVRnje5ZDdu_kZHrB_/s320/appian+road-blog.jpg" width="189" /></a></div><br />
I took the most famous tag of all, <i>O Tempora O Mores</i>, as a kind of leitmotiv... the best translation (if one adds an exclamation mark) being Trollope's title <i>The Way We Live Now</i>. This I made into a mosaic, variously interfered with to produce <i>O Amores</i>, <i>O Mores</i> etc. Making guest appearances in the book, in addition to Berlusconi, are Fidel Castro, Mick Jagger, Catullus, Christine Keeler, Julius Caesar, Dante's Beatrice, Agatha Christie, The Elgin Marbles, Vincenza Foppa, Mussolini and a London smuggler of antiquities who shall remain anonymous.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSFqgn8lDnE4s5BYIF_m0dbsS37Zx2FjaPezG8p01t8cldzgY5VZLAzAZFwQQF6IJauuKXQBL9_swvPreNN_IHSGcwCp_B_U5YDyH_KB8g-9Wf-NvMNTppjsqjYb8V_SQhjRcN/s1600/In+Verrum-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSFqgn8lDnE4s5BYIF_m0dbsS37Zx2FjaPezG8p01t8cldzgY5VZLAzAZFwQQF6IJauuKXQBL9_swvPreNN_IHSGcwCp_B_U5YDyH_KB8g-9Wf-NvMNTppjsqjYb8V_SQhjRcN/s320/In+Verrum-blog.jpg" width="197" /></a></div><br />
<i>Cicero: Orations</i> is soon to be published by the Folio Society. Copies may be purchased in their online shop <a href="http://www.foliosociety.com/orations" target="_blank">http://www.foliosociety.com/<wbr></wbr>orations</a><br />
<br />
The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-28341035710006686952011-06-28T11:24:00.001+01:002011-07-04T15:00:41.790+01:00Ornament<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9id8LiO3g0GgEqQpp4LVhwlbvyjFpaPeuazTdc5kPA5dLnY5YlS1DC1K3ogbDT-wPY2PeyUophVL6Gvq_l9WgPcRIJ0gdIp1KlpBWDmxkmnqKTBfXU_AzRN8a3dC0ijK992n/s1600/Ornament+Rilke-id1850-2011-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9id8LiO3g0GgEqQpp4LVhwlbvyjFpaPeuazTdc5kPA5dLnY5YlS1DC1K3ogbDT-wPY2PeyUophVL6Gvq_l9WgPcRIJ0gdIp1KlpBWDmxkmnqKTBfXU_AzRN8a3dC0ijK992n/s320/Ornament+Rilke-id1850-2011-blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Ornament</i>, pencil 2011, 30cm diameter</span></div><br />
Long ago I teamed myself up with Jessica Rawson to prepare an exhibition at the Royal Academy that would define and celebrate <i>Ornament</i>. We made a trip to the vaults of the Vatican to start the hunt for likely exhibits, and travelled to Vienna to continue the search. It was there over supper at the Sacher Hotel that we discussed in earnest what the show would say and what it might contain.<br />
<br />
We questioned each other's choices of the previous days. It soon emerged that our concepts of ornament, its nature, status and role in art were quite different; in effect irreconcilably opposed. With tempers frayed we retired to our respective rooms.<br />
<br />
I intended, before finally turning in, to jot down a few clarifying notes, but eventually sat up half the night composing a manifesto that I could read out to Jessica (and to Simonetta Fraquelli who was with us) over breakfast. I only half realised that this would mark the end of the collaboration and the evaporation of the project as a whole. It was this <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B9h8ZKZD3g5FMDU1MmU1MTktNWE1ZS00NjMwLTliMmQtZTA4YzIxMjk0ZmQ1&hl=en_GB">polemical pamphlet</a> that some months later I presented at the RA's Architecture Forum.<br />
<br />
Ornament frequently creeps into what I do, usually by way of borders and framing devices. That it was on my mind at the time can be seen in the drawings that obliterate the many agendas and minutes of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Merry-Meetings-Drawings-text-Phillips/dp/0954732413"><i>Merry Meetings</i></a> (D3 Editions 2005) including its cover illustration.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTrzies0o6-f5CgrwkUtbPqBnftYyErUkFiXOHoLyH_8PN3xHhvyyNvA57gJXEDy9nsG2MAltweB524x-oiBlmv9KAH1Dl3wcVc1C2gHNTsjIhjKF0dyGZbTZZyjtw5ZBvy1z/s1600/Merry+Meetings+cover-72-1000px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmTrzies0o6-f5CgrwkUtbPqBnftYyErUkFiXOHoLyH_8PN3xHhvyyNvA57gJXEDy9nsG2MAltweB524x-oiBlmv9KAH1Dl3wcVc1C2gHNTsjIhjKF0dyGZbTZZyjtw5ZBvy1z/s320/Merry+Meetings+cover-72-1000px.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
On my return from Vienna, remembering Derrida's contention that <i>the margins are at the centre</i>, I set about an ambitious exercise in pure ornamental mode. I soon got lost in its improvised and unsystematic convolutions and set it aside as unsolvable. My artistic performance had not matched my rhetoric.<br />
<br />
I have now retired from the business of formal portrait painting and stepped down from committees. Taking advantage of new resultant gaps of time I could return to the drawing abandoned so many months ago. Unravelling and reravelling I managed at last to bring it off.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFk8AlSRQFtix7MedVM85xuqq152afoe-Faq-FjKYZqeeH89i1xRye-gDFdwkqImAesLr-25NN-60n-DMjXcdKwfBHOKzMMGLOoWLsgLf18USc2DSJW_dv-Raxw9g4S-wX6nmb/s1600/Ornament+Rilke-id1851-2011-150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFk8AlSRQFtix7MedVM85xuqq152afoe-Faq-FjKYZqeeH89i1xRye-gDFdwkqImAesLr-25NN-60n-DMjXcdKwfBHOKzMMGLOoWLsgLf18USc2DSJW_dv-Raxw9g4S-wX6nmb/s320/Ornament+Rilke-id1851-2011-150.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Duino Ornament</i>, h42cm x w29cm, 2011</span></div><br />
I made a smaller coloured version, making minor adjustments to balance the field of energy. To this I added, as if to challenge the ornament's autonomy, the opening words from Rilke's first <i>Duino Elegy</i> which kept running through my mind; with various translations forming and reforming as I worked. Not a title but an accompaniment. <i>Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel / Ordnungen?</i> Perhaps this could be the official badge of the order of angels.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-50527345280188551582011-06-17T13:26:00.000+01:002011-06-17T13:26:24.841+01:00Vintage People on Photo Postcards<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXv0vpB9T9tx-fRoaUQSMHHwVswuifJyUqRu3cpIBFIU8b7Yqe4vuJrM7chTwOLfPjKPK6zgB5eAmnYEQFAN86xw1vIUlUeqToqBZecXTlqx_ZFns0etLA65-yM09xNw07zjSa/s1600/hats-blog72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXv0vpB9T9tx-fRoaUQSMHHwVswuifJyUqRu3cpIBFIU8b7Yqe4vuJrM7chTwOLfPjKPK6zgB5eAmnYEQFAN86xw1vIUlUeqToqBZecXTlqx_ZFns0etLA65-yM09xNw07zjSa/s200/hats-blog72.jpg" width="187" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMbJI2tUV64WclJUOpaj2vgIWMy6T1OqrcwUVegcnmq-ISpDAYchGbseCL7irrTIB4RdAjkwBL33gpW52qaNAXWpVsJttl-4n9yiHbTrrsvyYECq4a5J024PadqQhYL4afkIiB/s1600/readers-blog72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMbJI2tUV64WclJUOpaj2vgIWMy6T1OqrcwUVegcnmq-ISpDAYchGbseCL7irrTIB4RdAjkwBL33gpW52qaNAXWpVsJttl-4n9yiHbTrrsvyYECq4a5J024PadqQhYL4afkIiB/s200/readers-blog72.jpg" width="183" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The transfer of my archive to the Bodleian Library might have felt like parcelling up one foot and posting it direct to the grave. But it has not been like that at all: the opposite in fact, for out of that arrangement has come new life for a long cherished project.<br />
<br />
For twenty years I have been collecting real photo postcards of anonymous people. They all date from that period when portraiture suddenly became democratised. At the beginning of the twentieth century all manner of people, not just the wealthy, could for the first time in history possess their likenesses. What resulted was an inadvertent and unofficial visual census of the country.<br />
<br />
Out of over a million of such cards that have passed though my hands I have brought together fifty thousand or so which now, in albums and boxes, crowd out what passes for my kitchen. They are grouped under titles that announce the obsessive typologist, <i>Two Men</i>, <i>Tree</i>, <i>Pram</i>, <i>Bather</i>, <i>Nurse</i> etc.<br />
<br />
I exhibited a selection of these cards in 2004 at the National Portrait Gallery in a show whose catalogue, <i>We Are The People</i> should now be seen as a trailer to this current series of books published by the Bodleian itself. <i>Readers</i> was the natural first title in what promises to be an extensive but not expensive sequence produced by one of the world's great libraries.<br />
<br />
Issued at the same time was <i>Women & Hats</i>. <i>Weddings</i> and <i>Bicycles</i> appeared soon after with the same generic rubric <i>Vintage People on Photo Postcards</i>. All four are now available and more are to follow. Watch this space: start clearing a shelf.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ1xkrOz3CG1RXhwQ0EPFcCmHNxHoCYOJfK2PN4BqD7YCIu8-qb9X6J5IbJ5DfyYvOFLO4iTKM-Qv9mjthYOTHm11FW_wPksxIkuuw-s24hyphenhyphenZpHAWxIWVPRm0h9x6ungbvV2Xr/s1600/weddings-blog72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ1xkrOz3CG1RXhwQ0EPFcCmHNxHoCYOJfK2PN4BqD7YCIu8-qb9X6J5IbJ5DfyYvOFLO4iTKM-Qv9mjthYOTHm11FW_wPksxIkuuw-s24hyphenhyphenZpHAWxIWVPRm0h9x6ungbvV2Xr/s200/weddings-blog72.jpg" width="187" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw0sMyfzRIG_wpFmZCLLHBmzS6zPNE1VXEn_cxeB410WkucHRS_2wNN17eC3SQf9-P34NyY-lFxcv_tQK0myNsFpih2IzGSKtKAAfI9lqc9yfGEXYHqYSb6R6JKBi54-j7k-ds/s1600/bicycles-blog72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw0sMyfzRIG_wpFmZCLLHBmzS6zPNE1VXEn_cxeB410WkucHRS_2wNN17eC3SQf9-P34NyY-lFxcv_tQK0myNsFpih2IzGSKtKAAfI9lqc9yfGEXYHqYSb6R6JKBi54-j7k-ds/s200/bicycles-blog72.jpg" width="187" /></a></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-56488784225933877052011-04-27T13:22:00.003+01:002011-07-13T11:24:15.170+01:00Word Cross<style>
@font-face {
font-family: "MS 明朝";
}@font-face {
font-family: "MS 明朝";
}@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Cambria; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }
</style> <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaFMcEANJ0z1gOyrgigNO4UyGB4botnqXE2g2WAeZ8lQSnsDinUvmBO9XIgwhsg5bMJ7FVyAYuW1jbFmuQ03q9rVws-Yu57gjRyecoSsz3GO7t0rZIPBGn42SgeN5czwVt4Vzh/s1600/word+cross-id956-300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaFMcEANJ0z1gOyrgigNO4UyGB4botnqXE2g2WAeZ8lQSnsDinUvmBO9XIgwhsg5bMJ7FVyAYuW1jbFmuQ03q9rVws-Yu57gjRyecoSsz3GO7t0rZIPBGn42SgeN5czwVt4Vzh/s320/word+cross-id956-300.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Word Cross</i>, wire 1997</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
One of the strange aspects of an artist’s job is that most of the time you are doing something no one has asked you to do; things that, since they do not as yet exist, no one <i>could</i> ask you to do. Sometimes they may of course be things that no one will ever require you to have done. It is a chancy life of uncontingent imperatives. </div><div class="MsoNormal">I first exhibited this <i>Word Cross</i> at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1997. Caroline Gould, a parishioner of Farningham, a small village in Kent, showed a great interest in securing it for her church, even though it is an expensive and doctrinally controversial object. I can only too readily imagine what efforts of planning and persuasion led, after many months of discussion, to its eventual acquisition this year. There was just time for me to have it shipped back from New York where it had been on show, and delivered to Farningham church on the Thursday of Easter Week. Luckily the installation (at a spot we had worked out together with the help of paper models) could be effected in the few hours before the appropriate Good Friday service for its dedication. The picture shows that it will soon look as if, simultaneously modern and mediaeval, it has always been there. At a time when the artworld has become a bloated thing like a celebrity based branch of the stock exchange, it is very satisfying to make a real and seriously thoughtful transaction.</div><div class="MsoNormal">They also serve that only stand and wait... </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujdY4kMkqgM9M7fUw6aN5hqkzS310nctX5zPeHbGpG9pdURXaJZrI75hXPJw7__L-oK3WTDs5ibZcyVOeGRaE0MhnRHDJuYyzoGwGi6315sufyxTvlVXkS2x5749tDDoN0KQr/s1600/cross+in+24_4_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujdY4kMkqgM9M7fUw6aN5hqkzS310nctX5zPeHbGpG9pdURXaJZrI75hXPJw7__L-oK3WTDs5ibZcyVOeGRaE0MhnRHDJuYyzoGwGi6315sufyxTvlVXkS2x5749tDDoN0KQr/s320/cross+in+24_4_11.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Word Cross</i> at St Peter & St Paul, Farningham 2011</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-45008681577269741552011-03-28T13:34:00.001+01:002011-03-28T13:35:03.510+01:00Nothing like a regular client...<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAFzM9wmzyq0dx7FbV3o-pLnk2rMe8XnEhMXCSIg5fEd-Xc-2xcpS4SzNE5KrHbTPQ2KthrjU52NJ2LbWW4kczOI6Hsmzr3ikMoFlOvqJLEgJM6s2hwQAEa3h4gAz40SM3v4bNtA/s1600/Rima%2527s+song-2005-id1007-email.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587971407597987874" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAFzM9wmzyq0dx7FbV3o-pLnk2rMe8XnEhMXCSIg5fEd-Xc-2xcpS4SzNE5KrHbTPQ2KthrjU52NJ2LbWW4kczOI6Hsmzr3ikMoFlOvqJLEgJM6s2hwQAEa3h4gAz40SM3v4bNtA/s320/Rima%2527s+song-2005-id1007-email.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 222px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rima's Song</span>, comic book collage, 2005</span></div><br />
Fifty years ago I sold (for £12) my first picture to a proper collection, that of the JCR of Pembroke College, Oxford. This was a watercolour called <i>The City</i>. Last month this same Junior Common Room made a second purchase, slightly smaller for a slightly higher price. In their now splendidly hung gallery these two works, though separated in time by half a century hang merely inches apart.<br />
<br />
My present self remembers painting <i>The City</i> as an undergraduate in my Walton Crescent lodgings but my past self could not have imagined making <i>Rima's Song</i>... and would probably not have been able to identify it as mine, or even to have 'understood' it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoqnFgUjOc__Uyrn0u6huQOH-6Hdy0pJG9f9tvxYgxXMTcwyOpgVmqBgOwloSOpGbu1VsuxBX9u66X4Moq0SMkhP9XinUEoHYaFel5xI34HjoXYzGsSE3sHlQi5Zdp9uaCmzj/s1600/the+City-id1029-72.tn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoqnFgUjOc__Uyrn0u6huQOH-6Hdy0pJG9f9tvxYgxXMTcwyOpgVmqBgOwloSOpGbu1VsuxBX9u66X4Moq0SMkhP9XinUEoHYaFel5xI34HjoXYzGsSE3sHlQi5Zdp9uaCmzj/s1600/the+City-id1029-72.tn.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i> The City</i>, 1958, gouache.</span></div><br />
Rima has quite a role in fiction. She is not only the jungle girl of W. H. Hudson's <i>Green Mansions</i> but the heroine of H. W. K. Collam's <i>Come Autumn Hand</i>, from which came the idea of my largest drawing, <a href="http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/painting/rima/index.html"><i>Rima's Wall</i></a>. Her name is also, by nice coincidence, an anagram of Irma, the femme fatale of <i>A Human Document</i> (and hence <i>A Humument</i>). I was more than delighted, rummaging in a New York vintage comics store, to come across her again, once more a jungle goddess in tales like <i>Safari of Death</i> from <i>Rima</i> a short lived DC comics series from the seventies, brilliantly drawn by the enviably named Filipino artist Nestor Redondo.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Vx1Xsw-ZWzzHyHb_-jdtimhnCQEuKkaELGw9aT-2FFmEcuFIJdl0jZOB_VK5SCzSEd2pzAGg5lUPZHC4TY8mQZhbGaaQ3lmGKzOCkhJw0lJ-m0DekMhyphenhyphenjnTNcrzG0QMd6TuM/s1600/Rima%2527sWallinstall-1991-id563-150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Vx1Xsw-ZWzzHyHb_-jdtimhnCQEuKkaELGw9aT-2FFmEcuFIJdl0jZOB_VK5SCzSEd2pzAGg5lUPZHC4TY8mQZhbGaaQ3lmGKzOCkhJw0lJ-m0DekMhyphenhyphenjnTNcrzG0QMd6TuM/s400/Rima%2527sWallinstall-1991-id563-150.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <i>Rima's Wall</i>, 1991-2, pastel, h220cms x w1150cms</span></div><br />
The Rima in Collam's story is less exotic, and cherishes an album of esoteric postcards. Using material from the DC comics I echoed them in a series of postcard-sized collages. <i>Rima's Song</i> is one of these, and one of my many attempts to convey the look and feel of music by means of an abstract notation; a song without words or specified tones. All the tiny fragments that make up this miniature metascore come from Redondo's harmonious colours and fine-tuned marks.<br />
<br />
I was very impressed when the young committee members lighted upon this small and unassuming piece. To be truthful I was almost dismayed since it is a favourite thing I had half intended to keep. But it has found a good home not far from the Ashmolean which contains quite a comprehensive collection of my drawings, and the Bodleian which houses my archive. Fifty years ago the committee's predecessors chose the best thing on offer and their present members have more or less done it again. Artists be warned: if the Pembroke people come knocking at your door, they have very sharp eyes.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-58002805764193693622011-02-08T18:09:00.000+00:002011-02-08T18:09:50.200+00:00App for iPhone<div style="color: black;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFxROhVHgM6QML9lwShmtcn-w4kE3QKONcosJxvgU8nSV6qe7CPn6Tdi4AA6kF9cfttctdLh_wOhKWov_FNy2u9zom4MEncajYCZz8J2-PX7IW13HOvAfnzuCxREajrl9S4PD_/s1600/iPhone-4-Double-View_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFxROhVHgM6QML9lwShmtcn-w4kE3QKONcosJxvgU8nSV6qe7CPn6Tdi4AA6kF9cfttctdLh_wOhKWov_FNy2u9zom4MEncajYCZz8J2-PX7IW13HOvAfnzuCxREajrl9S4PD_/s320/iPhone-4-Double-View_blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGGP3zf6qh99kqqV-fZuffEMCoSTpFS3Br5sasdpRE73RP_sgusMo0f5EjOrE3vxdHIjTE1aA8Pj8iuexyN31zZ6E8w-pAoeL25jxjCJgDOTRSXNEXiHJLPDu4l9PheuqjzwCw/s1600/iPhone-4-Double-View_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div>To celebrate the appearance of <i>A Humument App</i> on iPhone I shall shortly add a dozen or so newly revised pages. The first to change will be page 1 (which is what one sees on opening the app) in its original version done in 1967 not long after textual intercourse, for me, began. The standard introductory phrase of a would-be epic, the Virgilian/Miltonic <i>I Sing</i> has to remain of course. What most cried out for change was the somewhat tentative surround. Here it is in its new livery as trailer for adaptations to come.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="color: black;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lZUfWa33QeSATM5GoGEC7NNUx_In03G4phuCTaF7t_VBU4dK1KvM4j7MvHXXqh_xapjYZQEOxhJrK7iA3wZcGHge0GgnaPXT6cavYzWF_M0f72n5UfnMzjKCK7grHQEvmZ3_/s1600/1-humapp-1152x1536-v.2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lZUfWa33QeSATM5GoGEC7NNUx_In03G4phuCTaF7t_VBU4dK1KvM4j7MvHXXqh_xapjYZQEOxhJrK7iA3wZcGHge0GgnaPXT6cavYzWF_M0f72n5UfnMzjKCK7grHQEvmZ3_/s320/1-humapp-1152x1536-v.2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">The strangest affect<span style="color: black;"> of my possession of an iPad (I do not have an iPhone) is that I have become my own consumer. Each night after midnight when the daily page first announces itself I consult, somewhat furtively (even though alone), the Oracle that I have made. I am often surprised by pages made long ago and almost forgotten, as well as by the sometimes uncanny predictions they offer their maker.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ahumumentapp-foriphone/id412430349?mt=8"><img border="0" height="69" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkrM1HbbyIpheODr7WnKwAtwjI0pyK0lpvnjmDWJ_XLBWzzlWQygh4nknqNIUH86Fny9CcaR335a6C5F4X9In-15XFdwUlYMjmCQW8Kn13Ptbyf8LiLPGVwkVT06c4HHam9fkX/s200/App_Store_Badge_EN.png" width="200" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=36113293&postID=5800280576419369362" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-64662019739762956042011-01-21T15:36:00.001+00:002011-01-24T10:55:22.918+00:00The Remains of the Day (My Painting Epilogue I)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKasXxpOfIjcIVbPPxG3p_c_GRE3pxxefn4h_pLAfJD6f5rMzZcB41lT5yJTPMmxt3WKOeIy95rYZ3UcEp2us-zLBI2tAiz5R2wMRb7YyXQVDJPubDxPPAzpKwSy2IQhiEf2zl/s1600/recycled+painting2i-id1822-2011-blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKasXxpOfIjcIVbPPxG3p_c_GRE3pxxefn4h_pLAfJD6f5rMzZcB41lT5yJTPMmxt3WKOeIy95rYZ3UcEp2us-zLBI2tAiz5R2wMRb7YyXQVDJPubDxPPAzpKwSy2IQhiEf2zl/s320/recycled+painting2i-id1822-2011-blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>The Remains of the Day</i>, 2011, recycled acrylic palettes on board, h41 x w76.5cm</span></div><br />
It's all Daphne's fault. Meeting my friend the admirable portrait painter Daphne Todd at Green & Stones in the King's Road (the last true artist's shop in London) I saw that she had bought a pad of disposable palettes. She said she always used them... so practical, no more cleaning palettes at the end of a working session etc. I said I thought they were meant for amateurs but I would give them a go; and anyway I had just used up my three wooden palettes making <i>Beckett Again</i> and had been about to buy a new one.<br />
<br />
So, for the whole of the reworking of <i>Quantum Poetics</i> I used them for mixing colours and for making the cumulative mix for the current <i>Terminal Grey</i> canvas. Always aiming to be the Compleat Recycler I did not however dispose of them but let them pile up and dry in the corner of the studio.<br />
<br />
Nor did I discard the sturdy tray that Andy had made to house the panels of <i>Quantum Poetics</i> as I was painting them, and on which I cleaned my brushes as I proceeded.<br />
<br />
One day looking at these curling, flimsy but paint laden palettes I had a taste of that epiphany that visited Kandinsky a hundred years ago when he observed that the mixtures and random conjunctions of colours on his palette were perhaps more exciting than the picture he was painting.<br />
<br />
I could see that the verve of the brushwork and the sliding and colliding (often called 'painterly') of colours were events that had largely eluded me in my work, as was the physical presence of paint itself that French artists call <i>matière</i>.<br />
<br />
How to harness this observed energy was the problem. Boulez (quoting Sibelius) says that, to compose, 'one must take delirium and organise it'.<br />
<br />
I got Andy to make a single panel that would exactly fit his tray frame (now itself covered in streaks of paint, plus the odd brushed-in memo or telephone number). I made a border for the panel of square sections of <i>Terminal Greys</i> gathered from the palettes, to link it with my original recycling project started over forty years ago. This made a frame within the frame. Then I started to build an improvisatory mosaic of choice fragments of colour and texture, following where the emerging shapes led, sticking down the little rectangles piece by piece with acrylic medium. Scissors, scalpel, straight-edge and glue brush was all the equipment I needed, and, once stuck down the pieces remained with no revision allowed.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEici94PAAB-SN-LMrkxnwkrCcLvDTjqZ9lWKzih4rTptQn9GIkQ7jBEKOwZSyNyy5A8DiFiix4LK7KHRCSJj1TtbPlHJrp_v-A-EWXIxbj2MFgrE1aOUHvUJhsyGfPkCxII881n/s1600/recycled+painting2iii-id1822-2011-1000px.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEici94PAAB-SN-LMrkxnwkrCcLvDTjqZ9lWKzih4rTptQn9GIkQ7jBEKOwZSyNyy5A8DiFiix4LK7KHRCSJj1TtbPlHJrp_v-A-EWXIxbj2MFgrE1aOUHvUJhsyGfPkCxII881n/s320/recycled+painting2iii-id1822-2011-1000px.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
I call the picture <i>The Remains of the Day</i>, a recycled title from Ishiguro's novel which would appear to be in turn a recycling of Sigmund Freud's <i>Rückstände des Tages</i>, the daily residue of impressions that make the basic recipe for a later encoded dream.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-76282265144865737262011-01-10T11:39:00.001+00:002011-01-11T10:53:52.417+00:00Brushes with the future<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinI70bDxw0Z4NkBGFa5fRQQHbjjjacXX_pYAhDTl4Jo1iGZ8fb4mDlrSMwu2qAP-ULJcXo7EaPhSWvSDcfh30CMGKMvLVI0JERXyzfyOm1qvtZvklvGuOUNgVOny6lZC4s5NxU/s1600/sketch+club+3.1.2011-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinI70bDxw0Z4NkBGFa5fRQQHbjjjacXX_pYAhDTl4Jo1iGZ8fb4mDlrSMwu2qAP-ULJcXo7EaPhSWvSDcfh30CMGKMvLVI0JERXyzfyOm1qvtZvklvGuOUNgVOny6lZC4s5NxU/s320/sketch+club+3.1.2011-blog.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
Having downloaded the Brushes app on my iPad I was keen to try it out. An evening at the venerable London Sketch Club armed with no other drawing tools put me nicely on the spot.<br />
<br />
With half hour poses being the order of the day I had four chances to make a fool of myself (since being so oddly equipped made me an object of curiosity). Luckily I could quickly press the bin ikon and trash my first three attempts which went sadly out of control. By the last pose I was almost getting the hang of it and produced something like a drawing I could honourably leave on the screen. So I count this my first effort. Certainly in terms of new technology it is a Sketch Club First, though essentially it seemed old fashioned as I held my reminder of a child's tablet to work on. Drawing with my finger, moreover, seemed virtually prehistoric.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-33759594822206323782010-12-14T16:28:00.000+00:002010-12-14T16:28:35.507+00:00Biochemical Society Medal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFNdzh2fQCahLdzyHS8rzES_9yRw06fcC1Ux7Y6aUxWi_Dqe4s2kz6X5MGQxbr5-j0-wadSZheds9Y6jXgT_EpVzlg_D_lTQL0O7oW_ejjsQviao3q60IYiXCMQmke53j53men/s1600/tom+with+medal-id1720-2010-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFNdzh2fQCahLdzyHS8rzES_9yRw06fcC1Ux7Y6aUxWi_Dqe4s2kz6X5MGQxbr5-j0-wadSZheds9Y6jXgT_EpVzlg_D_lTQL0O7oW_ejjsQviao3q60IYiXCMQmke53j53men/s320/tom+with+medal-id1720-2010-blog.jpg" width="240" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><i>See what you get if you practise</i>, as Liberace used to say, pausing at the keyboard to flash his huge diamond ring at children gathered round the stage.<br />
<br />
This is the Biochemical Society's highest honour made to celebrate its hundredth anniversary and much as I would like it to be mine as a result of spectacular research in Biochemistry I am here showing it off merely as designer.<br />
<br />
It was Martin Kemp who suggested my name to the Society and Sheila <span class="gI">Alink-Brunsdon</span> who saw it through the usual controversies.<br />
<br />
As soon as I spotted a translucent cabuchon of fossilised coral at a mineralogical shop in New York I felt that this would make a marvellous insert to enliven a medal that was more the size of a coaster than a coin. My thought was that this living organism had been transformed through long chemistry into its mirroring self in mineral form. The Very Intelligent Designer had scored once again in reflecting a structural complex that could be cosmic, miscroscopic, cellular or stellar in scale. It has become one of the endless pleasures of looking at pictures in Scientific American to guess whether they are of some event in space or some tiny happening in the world of the infinitely small, so similar do they seem in their patternings.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHCREJKZJ9HCTY-byODN9rlCUMXyxIBhLrq9S1hJ8401zzv0lqsP0Z9jbe4yBrK_YWOqtVnK7XlYiUg_I2_WM3hsSfdxhkKidF7PeRvB3F68Gag13Khyphenhyphen4PZuHi2dTvHnUnYXw/s1600/biochemical+medal-id1720-2010-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHCREJKZJ9HCTY-byODN9rlCUMXyxIBhLrq9S1hJ8401zzv0lqsP0Z9jbe4yBrK_YWOqtVnK7XlYiUg_I2_WM3hsSfdxhkKidF7PeRvB3F68Gag13Khyphenhyphen4PZuHi2dTvHnUnYXw/s320/biochemical+medal-id1720-2010-blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The hardest part of the operation was getting flat discs of the fossil coral which eventually came from far off in Surinam, via Tucson to the ever helpful Ammonite 2000 Ltd. in Pimlico Road. This took a long time to arrange but since the coral had been some millions of years in the making a few more weeks did not seem to matter much. Only 2mm thick they admit the light that reveals their delicate structure when the medal is held up. <br />
<br />
The medal is otherwise made of pure Brittania silver which has a lovely weight and feel, and the whole was expertly manufactured by Fattorini.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNAbWtXjDxbLI-clcmLHPWedQrPefnQTISNe5_ajkSx-RrqdktacQ2JQqslZ1V1GJ_KsgVZXJK-JkYNTSmxF1_-gMNBlDw1ycjdplI1WAvA7pZk7vntLz7f0J4Iujk1sRismTO/s1600/biochemical+society5a-id1720-2009-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNAbWtXjDxbLI-clcmLHPWedQrPefnQTISNe5_ajkSx-RrqdktacQ2JQqslZ1V1GJ_KsgVZXJK-JkYNTSmxF1_-gMNBlDw1ycjdplI1WAvA7pZk7vntLz7f0J4Iujk1sRismTO/s320/biochemical+society5a-id1720-2009-blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Design for Biochemical Society Medal, 2009, Pencil drawing. </span></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-32008053045098624782010-11-22T11:19:00.000+00:002010-11-22T11:19:54.321+00:00A Humument App<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Ojfs6ampG8wake36J2VAs10dOzZCbmlq-Fahub3zg-TCN6a786K2LWzhaPuDxnfUfX3dakmSnNyW9JLOFXiT0GkCQmhnu1PblWRidUlLW8hOQUaZCha-0sNFsOPYkGECoJ9K/s1600/front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Ojfs6ampG8wake36J2VAs10dOzZCbmlq-Fahub3zg-TCN6a786K2LWzhaPuDxnfUfX3dakmSnNyW9JLOFXiT0GkCQmhnu1PblWRidUlLW8hOQUaZCha-0sNFsOPYkGECoJ9K/s320/front.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><br />
On returning from Princeton the big excitement at Peckham HQ is presiding over the final birth throes of my <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-humument-app/id402755491?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4"><i>Humument</i> app for iPad</a> which is now up and running thanks to midwives Lucy and Alice, consultant Jonathan Hills and the surgical expertise of John Bowring.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUXBO92FBpVwIqshIjd0aNRwVAkKFeivYws3NTKagHS3ubRyySu513nLlM7MyW22aHa9QPMtIXKwMcrn4cY2Bu4j2eLA_LpiCKgz_VbrrcqXTx9Ei5gDBktZ9mWVESx-nPmcL/s1600/landscape2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUXBO92FBpVwIqshIjd0aNRwVAkKFeivYws3NTKagHS3ubRyySu513nLlM7MyW22aHa9QPMtIXKwMcrn4cY2Bu4j2eLA_LpiCKgz_VbrrcqXTx9Ei5gDBktZ9mWVESx-nPmcL/s320/landscape2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
So, safely delivered it shows, in colours more glowing that my pens and paints could achieve, almost like church windows at times, the whole of <a href="http://www.humument.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Humument</span></a>, including very recent pages. And all at full size, together with a device for using the book as an oracle in the manner of the randomised predictions of the <span style="font-style: italic;">I Ching</span> (though on the iPad a little internal jiggery-pokery replaces the never quite available yarrow sticks).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVmNlsQEU3WrQ4pRA0lUCjbsVfcfYQ5MNiDPZo6A3Jv5dXgSp0xqTiwrMF3v9o9AM47U9Nuq_imW8muS9wiSP6veF3wKFEncXchkK5H9Eh9Z0LkDMavD4-FeQOXYLoFc5VkbG/s1600/find.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVmNlsQEU3WrQ4pRA0lUCjbsVfcfYQ5MNiDPZo6A3Jv5dXgSp0xqTiwrMF3v9o9AM47U9Nuq_imW8muS9wiSP6veF3wKFEncXchkK5H9Eh9Z0LkDMavD4-FeQOXYLoFc5VkbG/s320/find.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br />
Very soon after starting the book in the sixties I dreamed of its use as an oracle and it has taken forty years for technology to make that possible.<br />
<br />
So if you have an iPad you should go straight to <i>A Humument</i> in the app store and have a look. If you do not have an iPad a word to Father Christmas might do the trick. If you only have an iPhone, well stick around: there will be a miniature version early next year. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn_zZ6BoFUXRs3JQ1ZQQmFTIhncnHuuBUb1H1AZd2kyg-HkZEyNBv6_LaWqrRI5hDcdyUlRLekyzQzdqPpZ0j2l3Ynm_8cg0T6HGBJwr4Iwqay3vDLkSHks4F4qH3g6o0qP-BO/s1600/oracle3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn_zZ6BoFUXRs3JQ1ZQQmFTIhncnHuuBUb1H1AZd2kyg-HkZEyNBv6_LaWqrRI5hDcdyUlRLekyzQzdqPpZ0j2l3Ynm_8cg0T6HGBJwr4Iwqay3vDLkSHks4F4qH3g6o0qP-BO/s320/oracle3.jpg" width="245" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivyghMrlyBIdEgE81nX7DX_4qhMcqGJLL0qETkwob1m_iHxrciTalT8tpteBP2PQoqGPYxbPvT16T36WhU96ZxLZ54TBn_UY9l8xM43ycDqwScXk31uPE8WpFlV7a3FRSA5oPX/s1600/share4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivyghMrlyBIdEgE81nX7DX_4qhMcqGJLL0qETkwob1m_iHxrciTalT8tpteBP2PQoqGPYxbPvT16T36WhU96ZxLZ54TBn_UY9l8xM43ycDqwScXk31uPE8WpFlV7a3FRSA5oPX/s320/share4.jpg" width="245" /></a></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-73257083870121236772010-10-18T12:54:00.002+01:002010-10-18T13:11:51.556+01:00Flowers NYC opening<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJxxl8gRR-ATTcNICX5yfUL21sls3yyodWu_3dVTi77ct9wW2zJNVXJXOc_KyQ0afCKlXA_0N1UYZuN9ylpvZI9sddD4QXCi7kLrJ8zdr2oukcte80Il3WUaz8HSafEcyidFM/s1600/CUBE_1-BLOG.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJxxl8gRR-ATTcNICX5yfUL21sls3yyodWu_3dVTi77ct9wW2zJNVXJXOc_KyQ0afCKlXA_0N1UYZuN9ylpvZI9sddD4QXCi7kLrJ8zdr2oukcte80Il3WUaz8HSafEcyidFM/s320/CUBE_1-BLOG.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529356167801892018" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Wittgenstein's Dilemma</span>, 1999, silkscreen on acrylic cube. Photo Ben Drury.</span><br /><br /></div>Back once again on Einstein Drive after an enjoyable opening at Flowers, my first in their splendid new gallery on W20th. The usual loyal and loved suspects turned up i.e. Ruth and Marvin Sackner (with their brilliant grandson), John Pull (bravely after illness) and Richard Minsky, who brought with him one of my heroes, the 94 year old George Braziller, whose book on Albert Pinkham Ryder that I read fifty years ago became (and, perhaps now invisibly, remains) a real inspiration.<br /><br />Who else should be mentioned in despatches? My lone East Coast blogwatcher, John, and Virginia late of the Folger and, oh yes... a chinese/american lady who went round putting noughts on the price list so that everything was in millions. She also offered me spectacular <span style="font-style: italic;">apres vernissage</span> sexual services, but I opted for a good supper instead, hosted by Matthew, at which we all toasted Brent who had made such an elegant job of hanging and lighting.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-44312100950937616072010-10-04T13:23:00.011+01:002010-10-04T13:43:48.027+01:00Rail Diversions & Flowers NYC<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4pKjTDxWOPbH3l2TfVkHFz2xUFopist2xWuneydNjH-x-VporHYaa23FhnuMRDQCwr3mEr8yTjR1-Ubs83uhUyliAoFWnGJbQYCsleRybsv1geO4FD4tYnj4RWytjU7fEikUO/s1600/graftons+st1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4pKjTDxWOPbH3l2TfVkHFz2xUFopist2xWuneydNjH-x-VporHYaa23FhnuMRDQCwr3mEr8yTjR1-Ubs83uhUyliAoFWnGJbQYCsleRybsv1geO4FD4tYnj4RWytjU7fEikUO/s320/graftons+st1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524169515914285122" border="0" /></a><br />My railings have just been officially unveiled at no1 Grafton Street... nice for a veteran Monopoly player to have at last a stake in Mayfair. There was no mention in the opening speech (by the developer's grand fromage) of <a href="http://futurecity.co.uk/projects/70">Future City</a> who nursed the project from beginning to end or of MDM who actually made the work. I took the opportunity however, in the customary 'few words from the artist', pointedly to make amends. It was a rum affair in a virtual world, entirely attended apart from my own two invitees, Jeremy King and Nick Tite, by men in identical suits. With much relief and thanks to Jeremy, Nick and I quickly repaired to the Wolsely.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNT8mx0qwa7jMvzO5JI0b5FUa17bmpxrT19zoYA07J8AvE7MLWcFeefoogIX42Xh0xW6P5an3tzEUwpUkTJYbOX13JurpN8QJ-dayVkGZlwptfs4JNOMi8AxqOYDZl1ZwdvGAk/s1600/graftons+st2.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 235px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNT8mx0qwa7jMvzO5JI0b5FUa17bmpxrT19zoYA07J8AvE7MLWcFeefoogIX42Xh0xW6P5an3tzEUwpUkTJYbOX13JurpN8QJ-dayVkGZlwptfs4JNOMi8AxqOYDZl1ZwdvGAk/s320/graftons+st2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524169591449197330" border="0" /></a><br />On the way to Grafton St I looked in at Westminster Cathedral to catch a glimpse of the new mosaic of St David recently blessed by the Pope. This occupies a space I had been allotted for my own design of the same subject, once approved but recently rejected through some clerical skullduggery, or Madonna, or Maradonna and the Hand of God. It would have had to be pretty impressive to have broken through my vanity and professional pride to gain approval. There was however no problem in that it is a spangly confection that looks to be largely made of boiled sweets. More interesting perhaps was to notice a small group of conspicuously gay men looking up at my mosaic of Cardinal Newman, himself elected last month to the company of the Blessed and therefore on the fast track to sainthood. Could they have been prospecting for their future patron saint? Might I inadvertently have created a gay ikon? Newman is currently one miracle short of a halo. Might this eventually, and ironically, be it?<br /><br />I am currently installed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and keeping an eye on my imminent exhibition in New York. Any of my East Coast readers, or all three of them, are invited to the opening on the 7th October. Do say hello if you turn up.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh59-VfAlTt_fgdGJf7BYPUhHjk0jPNNHLEr6vDSCKrhpSEcAgrDYzVvYdjdnxNX-rbW75atT52t9-RDglicLsR_2OZJmnM6y-A91Z5JnyOlAaURNev2dMVUTN2rH_XN6Ql0wuN/s1600/Phillips_Eblast5-1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh59-VfAlTt_fgdGJf7BYPUhHjk0jPNNHLEr6vDSCKrhpSEcAgrDYzVvYdjdnxNX-rbW75atT52t9-RDglicLsR_2OZJmnM6y-A91Z5JnyOlAaURNev2dMVUTN2rH_XN6Ql0wuN/s320/Phillips_Eblast5-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524167190539262210" border="0" /></a>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-13335621994353206522010-08-31T11:52:00.009+01:002010-08-31T13:03:51.137+01:00Anyone for Tennis?<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkZ1NGgOoE5jixJ3zqD8-O0vlkCrXjhONaR4i76uv0KxBQWGCnRi0lFfnn-AB9o4SzJYbWL04z34Ddb6Jerjl1RwBPeL56wg4GWyVEZtWgsZ1g_J7SMx5ZIlgjL4BHXyARIjL/s1600/seven+ages-id1657-2010-blog.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkZ1NGgOoE5jixJ3zqD8-O0vlkCrXjhONaR4i76uv0KxBQWGCnRi0lFfnn-AB9o4SzJYbWL04z34Ddb6Jerjl1RwBPeL56wg4GWyVEZtWgsZ1g_J7SMx5ZIlgjL4BHXyARIjL/s320/seven+ages-id1657-2010-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511542847562135746" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Seven Ages of Man</span>, 2010, artist's hair on tennis balls.</span><br /><br /></div>At last after a few years of squint and tweezers I have assembled, like the notes of an octave, a set of seven well-tempered tennis balls. They are meant to match Shakespeare's seven ages of man. A lawn-green stand (crafted by MDM) serves as their support.<br /><br />The strokes of time are measured in the deciduous changes of my own hair applied to shaved tennis balls. They register the passing years by one of those annual markers like Easter or the Lord's Test Match, in this case the great tennis fixture of the summer in South London. A distorted line, again from Shakespeare, echoes in my head... <span style="font-style: italic;">and all our Wimbledons have lighted fools the way to dusty death</span>. Magnificent but cheerless. Perhaps I should have settled for T.S. Eliot's finer scale... <span style="font-style: italic;">I have measured out my life in Wimbledons</span>.<br /><br />It is an enigmatic object seen as a whole and certainly speaks of something. If I completely knew what it said it would not then have been something worth saying. Such is art.<br /><br />See it at Flowers Gallery, W 20th St., New York from October 7th (Private view 6-8pm).<br /><br />This is not the end of hair however. I'm still growing the stuff. One of my dreams has been to make a hat out of my own hair, a fine <span style="font-style: italic;">chapeau d'artiste</span>, or elegant fedora. What better headgear in the event of baldness than a homegrown hat replacing absent hair with its past self. Now that dream has come a little nearer... (to be continued).The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-40320966160907091352010-07-21T13:22:00.009+01:002010-07-21T13:32:20.753+01:00I'll go on (continued)<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPuoRxgfGSggOUEfjrH6ivnNNBSS7Yx6g10EYzR06KY99hlH6SddQvfzd6gUIpF_PsJBfpl5zGHjG66zX5y3Et3_449RvaGTXK3TdYlr5-L5a7wnfb4jhQBhucV8rmp6BPMb3/s1600/quantum+poetics-id1599-2010-150.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPuoRxgfGSggOUEfjrH6ivnNNBSS7Yx6g10EYzR06KY99hlH6SddQvfzd6gUIpF_PsJBfpl5zGHjG66zX5y3Et3_449RvaGTXK3TdYlr5-L5a7wnfb4jhQBhucV8rmp6BPMb3/s320/quantum+poetics-id1599-2010-150.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496022715070216162" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Quantum Poetics, July 2010, Oil on panel.</span><br /><br /></div>Like those stages of the World Cup in which England feebly participated my painting Quantum Poetics has turned into a game of two halves. What, in a recent issue of Turps, claimed to be the almost finished thing ended up vague and veiled and somehow incomplete. It called for a complete revision. I added, by way of injury time, a further section of panels to its right wing painted in a different (major rather than minor) key and hung the whole work in the ping pong room of my other studio, where I could not escape its gaze.<br /><br />The new section declared even more emphatically what was wrong so I took half the painting back to the Talfourd Road studio and set about revising it. It thus became a game of two studios. Now at last I have reworked this part and have reached the scary moment of bringing it back to join the unreworked half. The complete picture looks now like one of those telling illustrations of an old master that has only been partly cleaned; as if these new colours and somewhat revised drawing were what had been hidden underneath all the time. The whistle has not yet blown. I’ll go on.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUgIflXrxWJB2R_NssZB6jxPX374Q-BySJPCMbzf-RFyI7a3auykLtApwTcf-KjlYAza9g8-65RpWiNLP2RggWeN7NOlSKArn8t2uhqF8xpqJC5HLHQDcy59W6THlOEvzZx2AK/s1600/Beckett+AgainIIa-id1716-2009-150.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUgIflXrxWJB2R_NssZB6jxPX374Q-BySJPCMbzf-RFyI7a3auykLtApwTcf-KjlYAza9g8-65RpWiNLP2RggWeN7NOlSKArn8t2uhqF8xpqJC5HLHQDcy59W6THlOEvzZx2AK/s320/Beckett+AgainIIa-id1716-2009-150.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495970072418285330" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Beckett Again, 2010, oil on palette.</span><br /></div><br />Also revised as a game of two sides rather than two objects is the relevant Beckett piece. Now this splits the quotation to either side of a single palette. This could be mounted to face me entering and leaving the studio, showing whichever part of the quotation would be appropriate to the beginning or end of the day's work. I think I favour facing I’ll go on in the morning and I can’t go on in the evening. That's how it sometimes feels.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMma1r0_qD5utKifEe6DFH-oHkyO3qoP9tiSHLlE-EpXjPxng002iwy6OYCPHN33FCYcJYOza9kq1sYhcXZQMlaGpTEKpekHQAnUsEnU-p3LkWerscVVeKvSIC67kkIRqUDbxv/s1600/Beckett+AgainIIb-id1716-2009-150.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMma1r0_qD5utKifEe6DFH-oHkyO3qoP9tiSHLlE-EpXjPxng002iwy6OYCPHN33FCYcJYOza9kq1sYhcXZQMlaGpTEKpekHQAnUsEnU-p3LkWerscVVeKvSIC67kkIRqUDbxv/s320/Beckett+AgainIIb-id1716-2009-150.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495970395374485794" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Beckett Again (verso), 2010, oil on palette.</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">[See it at Flowers, New York in my exhibition which opens on October 8th. Readers of this are invited to the private view on the 7th].</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-49077524748177841482010-05-18T12:29:00.012+01:002010-05-18T15:45:45.733+01:00Modem form a poetry... Get with it!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhP_u1B1K0ZVxNC0u5so4H7XkcjlRUU-hhbX30oxclFDRv6DKq7Yw8k9xojABjAAEdn0gzrwpADz7IAua43f-E5VRBEaeJiwQtEmulXV5i2zcMC6GSJaeSgN_9rR4LECS9W3KBnw/s1600/Aleveltxt-blog-18.5.2010.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 249px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhP_u1B1K0ZVxNC0u5so4H7XkcjlRUU-hhbX30oxclFDRv6DKq7Yw8k9xojABjAAEdn0gzrwpADz7IAua43f-E5VRBEaeJiwQtEmulXV5i2zcMC6GSJaeSgN_9rR4LECS9W3KBnw/s320/Aleveltxt-blog-18.5.2010.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472574344281240098" border="0" /></a><br />Flora, my wise and sophisticated stepdaughter shows me the study manual that accompanies her labours with A level English. And lo! Here I am in the glossary of <span style="font-style: italic;">Edexcel A2 English Literature Student Book</span>, neatly tucked between Hegel and Hyperbole under the rubric <span style="font-style: italic;">humument</span>. I am flattered.<br /><br />But wait a minute. This seems not to be written <span style="font-style: italic;">for</span> but <span style="font-style: italic;">by</span> a student, and one moreover none too bright or knowledgeable, or even literate.<br /><br />I might have known there was a reason why messages from GCSE pupils to my website usually start with my name spelt wrongly. Here it appears as Tom Phillip, possibly because the writer does not yet know how apostrophes function.<br /><br />The description of my process is drab indeed and made more so by the lacklustre word 'somehow'. Nonetheless I and my books are obscure topics, unlike Hegel and his: so I glance at the entry above. It is turn-in-the-grave time for poor Friedrich. After an alarmingly rough guide to the dialectic, the student is referred to what is 'probably' (another dampening word) his most famous work <span style="font-style: italic;">The Phenomonolgy of the Spirit</span> [sic]. Two spelling mistakes in a single vital word, plus two incorrectly added articles (the and the), and a less useful translation of 'Geist', is not bad going for what is usually now called in English Hegel's <span style="font-style: italic;">Phenomenology of Mind</span>.<br /><br />My eye strays upwards to Graphology (do they mean 'Typography'?) where I meet a usage unknown to me. I can't go on.<br /><br />I'll go on; at least to find the intext reference to <span style="font-style: italic;">A Humument</span>, and here it is with its own spectacular illiteracy, ie 'this modem form a poetry'. What can that mean?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6fHF7sY96hUusCY0WB8AndBFCJ0JBM3lWXJmqWZ9Z7bR0O6xeCWaYIKBwyW10QW4YAGSXafwlfeOvYX6nfnKeJg_VsHwD3wDvsOiCIoCpPSm7M0prULKenbABXwuNe6yg0uO4zg/s1600/Aleveltxt2-blog-18.5.2010.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 269px; height: 305px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6fHF7sY96hUusCY0WB8AndBFCJ0JBM3lWXJmqWZ9Z7bR0O6xeCWaYIKBwyW10QW4YAGSXafwlfeOvYX6nfnKeJg_VsHwD3wDvsOiCIoCpPSm7M0prULKenbABXwuNe6yg0uO4zg/s320/Aleveltxt2-blog-18.5.2010.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472574410106643138" border="0" /></a><br />Flora and her classmates would be justified in writing to the Examination Board to explain that if mistakes occur in their papers these may originate in the very textbook that has been approved. Should they fail the exam they might sue the authors (Mike Royston and Jackie Moore) or the publisher (Pearson Education Ltd.) by filing what the legal profession would, with nice appropriateness, call a class action.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />Undeterred I offer up the latest example of 'this modem form a poetry' done at the London Sketch Club on successive visits. The left hand image is painted to mask the earlier one, suggesting a critique. Something dialectical going on here I suspect...<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHZHrygfNsYs2Zc5fIr7dGz4oy8gJfleVrN9sp3sSGI7lk3Ono0E3qcJzJ8y0QKEBJOGUSUSVPNqliEI8xv5q5CT9yVvu74YD-UcwMy0fk1iuMNfBl1axKq27DnC8Q-CmrK-LSA/s1600/Humument+p309-2010-id1788-150.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHZHrygfNsYs2Zc5fIr7dGz4oy8gJfleVrN9sp3sSGI7lk3Ono0E3qcJzJ8y0QKEBJOGUSUSVPNqliEI8xv5q5CT9yVvu74YD-UcwMy0fk1iuMNfBl1axKq27DnC8Q-CmrK-LSA/s320/Humument+p309-2010-id1788-150.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472574661199070930" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Humument</span> p309, 2010</span><br /></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-52956693433922293262010-04-06T13:10:00.008+01:002010-04-08T12:42:32.632+01:00I'll Go On<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinKhgr7OQm6KZyMZbVJ1qawSv6nUQ-uOmUij8BZttMOErIwcRPsLgQOAmXOzWJ_yPNrMvS5e_JJBQ6Ihg63iP4JBCj0OydtatmmGHNhjiS-a8RJPPl-DBeYQiKuhaz0oX2Rsv/s1600/fiftypence-1.jpg"><br /></a><br />Any artistic career has its vanities. One area at least in which I thought myself the British pioneer was the artist's book. This is now a genre in its own right taught earnestly in colleges here and abroad. The particular variant I was certain had been my own discovery was that of working over a complete novel (W.H. Mallock's <span style="font-style: italic;">A Human Document</span><span>)</span> to make what I call a treated book.<br /><br />Alas a recent fragment of information gleaned, as is most of what I know, from the pages of the TLS, challenges my claim on all counts. Among the books once belonging to Oscar Wilde held in the Library of Magdalen College, Oxford, is a copy of Mallock's <span style="font-style: italic;">A New Republic</span> of which page 30 displays a graphic intervention in the form of 'a jam stain', perhaps the first mark of a projected treatment by Wilde of the whole volume.<br /><br />I thus find myself neither the inventor of the process nor the first Oxford graduate to employ it. More pathetically I am not, it would seem, even the first to have used a text by W.H. Mallock.<br /><br />Distressed I rang Magdalen's librarian who obligingly took down the book and reported that it was a 'spot' rather than a 'stain', and not identifiably 'jam' (chemical analysis is promised). In effect this was merely a typical example of the lurid sensationalism that gives the TLS a bad name.<br /><br />Nonetheless I had lost my claim to originality and was reminded of the story of an evening at the Cafe Royal when Whistler coined a specially clever epigram. "I wish I had said that" remarked Wilde, at which Whistler rejoined, "You will, Oscar, you will."<br /><br />Undeterred by the blow I carry on with my revisions of <span style="font-style: italic;">A Humument</span>. It is a good recipe for an artist to persist with a task, to head for the often drawn mountain, to set up the familiar still life: return to the same spot and dig a little deeper.<br /><br />Here then is my Easter offering, p303 in the appropriate form of a recitative and chorus...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKOt-fXrmmfdToWpRcjW5MNFhCfClVpd4XYTAO7Jboen9jhLs0rG655FhVnMnLz0L6iOqApb_2C0Jw6880r2U8JY5L981LQWAcX5S2Epr3zLdcsawNftR9RwHCAkca0j_q8QW4wA/s1600/humument+p303-id1785-2010-blog.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 221px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKOt-fXrmmfdToWpRcjW5MNFhCfClVpd4XYTAO7Jboen9jhLs0rG655FhVnMnLz0L6iOqApb_2C0Jw6880r2U8JY5L981LQWAcX5S2Epr3zLdcsawNftR9RwHCAkca0j_q8QW4wA/s320/humument+p303-id1785-2010-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456999292542517778" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Humument</span> page 303, watercolour, 2010.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Comment from Anonymous:<br />National Public Radio broadcast from the Folger Library<br />extract:<br />Prof Collins examines a Shakespeare First Folio:<br /><br />Prof. COLLINS: One of the other ones that we have here has, I'm pretty certain, a strawberry jam stain. Samuel Johnson, actually, his first folio, is full of food stains. The next owner that had it after him said, I've repeatedly met with thin flakes of pie crust between its pages.<br /><br />Tom Phillips replies<br />Thank you anonymous for your uncrusty mention of Johnson.<br />Treating a book is one thing,but actually feeding it was well ahead of the game.<br />There is a connection in that I designed the 50p coin that celebrated<br />the 250th anniversary of the great dictionary.<br />it was my largest edition of anything [18,000,000].<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinKhgr7OQm6KZyMZbVJ1qawSv6nUQ-uOmUij8BZttMOErIwcRPsLgQOAmXOzWJ_yPNrMvS5e_JJBQ6Ihg63iP4JBCj0OydtatmmGHNhjiS-a8RJPPl-DBeYQiKuhaz0oX2Rsv/s1600/fiftypence-1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 141px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinKhgr7OQm6KZyMZbVJ1qawSv6nUQ-uOmUij8BZttMOErIwcRPsLgQOAmXOzWJ_yPNrMvS5e_JJBQ6Ihg63iP4JBCj0OydtatmmGHNhjiS-a8RJPPl-DBeYQiKuhaz0oX2Rsv/s200/fiftypence-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457730441264360578" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-21026669157797530842010-02-02T14:57:00.013+00:002010-02-02T17:05:20.396+00:00Blackballed<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil27tOqef1PKdoWaPBXTzgDPxVqwKao26hekeYIANAxdoAGOD2Q5T5hsCQ034cxyVe2OuIL9BDgqui5KirEDQ7Qf_GZrgmGwiaL0ChSvbLOT_1jFORxYrLOOBQBvnrhhyphenhyphenZ78xw/s1600-h/african+goldweights-blog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil27tOqef1PKdoWaPBXTzgDPxVqwKao26hekeYIANAxdoAGOD2Q5T5hsCQ034cxyVe2OuIL9BDgqui5KirEDQ7Qf_GZrgmGwiaL0ChSvbLOT_1jFORxYrLOOBQBvnrhhyphenhyphenZ78xw/s320/african+goldweights-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433669804987635986" border="0" /></a><br />Back from Berlin after the launch of 'African Goldweights' at the Barbara Wien Gallery. The show looked handsome and I am happy with the book, yet another collaboration with Hansjorg Mayer, my publisher for forty years.<br /><br />Sad however to miss the Australian tennis final: I had to hold my breath until the TV highlights in the late evening to see who won. Predictably perhaps Heldenspieler Federer made our Murray look pretty ordinary.<br /><br />Coincidentally, the following morning I finished my black tennis ball.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1yyKkp0FkWwFXNcNpjrTZnw4cMW397Des8EtP6F4lAYTLu3Q7Vpp6hWM6q51hLEdu0xKKa2Ut6kIGJXn633UpIN5fo052cYH76tTjXq4kgJ4NoFiHU4MMIK8_QMN9OddO1bWF/s1600-h/black+tennis+ball-blog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1yyKkp0FkWwFXNcNpjrTZnw4cMW397Des8EtP6F4lAYTLu3Q7Vpp6hWM6q51hLEdu0xKKa2Ut6kIGJXn633UpIN5fo052cYH76tTjXq4kgJ4NoFiHU4MMIK8_QMN9OddO1bWF/s320/black+tennis+ball-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433692509742759618" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Tennis ball covered with hair, 2010.</span><br /></div>The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-33293757356617491412010-01-19T10:47:00.007+00:002010-01-19T12:12:10.854+00:00More balls<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5f5nz_Rj8aICgVBZy0CPkiGWQOe2AVQUK9IqEQOPHE8oYbx3qHLZDwyLNsVin4wO2qamg1e3nyQm4J-m966afctijyFYlY25oONLzZHo6rfyC2tRVR4gj46oHD5SS9WlsGxu/s1600-h/tennis+ball+in+prog-blog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 242px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5f5nz_Rj8aICgVBZy0CPkiGWQOe2AVQUK9IqEQOPHE8oYbx3qHLZDwyLNsVin4wO2qamg1e3nyQm4J-m966afctijyFYlY25oONLzZHo6rfyC2tRVR4gj46oHD5SS9WlsGxu/s320/tennis+ball+in+prog-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428419038512948866" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Black-haired ball nearing completion, 2010.</span><br /><br /></div>I was quite wrong. My last comments on the signature configuration of earlier balls led to a small supply of vintage examples from ever helpful suspects. One box of Slazengers was actually dated 1974 and the balls therein were of what I had come to think of as a late decadent type.<br /><br />Perhaps the lone, grey, bald and orphaned ball I started with is truly archaic. For all I know it matches those that appear in Henry V.<br /><br />I still, however, regard it as somehow authentic and, as here, continue to mimic the fine curves of its manufacture.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36113293.post-8466705457765722392010-01-12T12:47:00.009+00:002010-01-15T14:48:29.439+00:00My Painting/Epilogue<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4Ut1-o9LBbiRwJ9xBlYjY90xFkzJUD9NOyIEkSA5aVLWEpMbCzliMEQmO3KdQeZ3kUk1heuEkt49CtnqL63JV2-5iBw9qymX61qx6ZCe1ItljqJvyfANcWXG4CUWSQSMAQoS/s1600-h/transcript-tiled53-blog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 188px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4Ut1-o9LBbiRwJ9xBlYjY90xFkzJUD9NOyIEkSA5aVLWEpMbCzliMEQmO3KdQeZ3kUk1heuEkt49CtnqL63JV2-5iBw9qymX61qx6ZCe1ItljqJvyfANcWXG4CUWSQSMAQoS/s320/transcript-tiled53-blog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425838567689434034" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Quantum Poetics</span> mock up of extended format.</span><br /><br /></div>Although I have done nothing to it since last March a lot has happened in and to <span style="font-style: italic;">Quantum Poetics</span>.<br /><br />It has moved to the studio in Bellenden Road to be hung in one place then another. I have again stared at it as well as glimpsing it over and over again while playing ping pong. It tells me that I have not yet done with it.<br /><br />I can no longer blame the wayward light in Talfourd Road for its having lost its colour balance. It has contracted Burne-Jones Disease in which viridian and ochre conspire to trump however many other colours may be present. This is summed up in the famous rhyme from Gilbert's <span style="font-style: italic;">Patience</span> in which the Wildean aesthete is mocked as 'Greenery - Yallery / Grosvenor Gallery'.<br /><br />The complaint is serious but not fatal. It is largely a question of key (what is light is not always bright) and what musicians call <span style="font-style: italic;">tessitura</span>; in this case it is as if the upper strings are working too near the lower, leading to the equivalent of that overweight sound that sometimes adds too much gravy to the symphonies of Brahms.<br /><br />The musical analogy is relevant to the other fault in the picture, its general format. The implied calligraphy moving from left to right, shouts 'unfinished symphony' and demands an eastern extension to provoke the action of reading.<br /><br />An excellent chance to put both these symptoms to a clinical test came my way when I was asked to provide elements for a screen at the Ivy Club. This project took me to the Coriander Studios at Perivale where the whole picture was loaded, scanned and printed out. Since more elements were wanted for the screen than the picture provided I extended its length by taking a section from the west side of the painting and adding it, with rough surgery, upside down to the eastern end. Uncannily it was not a bad match and immediately the picture seems to be a happier and more appropriate shape.<br /><br />Via Brad Faine's computer one can, as on a music synthesiser, change key at will. In a second one can shift it from umber minor to crimson major. The same image can move from sombre to raucous in a frightening trice, equivalent to (but not the same as) hundreds of hours in the studio.<br /><br />On both fronts I learned what I needed to know and once again 'I can't go on' becomes 'I'll go on'.The Night Porterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782877523871394596noreply@blogger.com1