Left Bank by Agnes Poirier

 ‘Left Bank’ by Agnes Poirier, publ 2018

This book is about Paris from the Second World War to 1953 as the place where artists and writers were working and meeting, and also drinking, taking drugs and having many sexual liaisons.
Poirier packs in an immense amount of research and detail which can fascinate but in the end the complex array of infidelities becomes wearisome.
Surprisingly the RAF dropped leaflets of a poem by Eluard entitled ‘Liberty’ during the nazi occupation. Somehow Sartre escaped from a German prison with false ID. Picasso managed in a time of scarcity to find enough bronze to cast 150 sculptures. All the paintings from the Louvre were successfully moved to safe locations. Existentialism emerged.
The film ‘Casablanca’ came out in 1942 -  a film I realised only at third viewing shows  political refugees escaping war.
Eventually de Gaulle walked triumphantly up the Champs Elysee with the rejoicing liberated crowds, although fascist snipers killed 300 people. Hundreds of returned  emaciated prisoners were placed in requisitioned hotels and had to be  fed at first small amounts as they recovered.
Jazz thrived.  The communists were very influential and many had been very brave in the resistance. Through the  Marshall Plan the USA helped Europe,  seeing it as an entity, and sending ex GI troops on grants to enjoy studying in Paris. Black people like Miles Davies, enjoying life with Juliet Greco, found racial hatred so much less prevalent than at home.
Sartre started a third way political party, the ‘ Democratic and Revolutionary Alliance’ which eventually petered out. Garry Davis publically gave up his citizenship and called for World Government. Stalin’s death camps were revealed.
Simone de Beauvoir published ‘the second sex’ which many of the men including Camus rejected as it showed how women were in need of their own liberation.
Maurice Chevalier was a collaborator. Koestler violently abused his wife.
There were witch hunts in America against those suspected of communist sympathies- Walt Disney and Ginger Rogers being on the Republican extreme of anti leftwing people.

There is a helpful digest of events and a list of the people who figure in the book with their dates.

I think it gives a vivid flavour of the times and flows well despite some absurd sentences occasionally where the author cobbles her vast researches together, not differentiating between the relative importance of her detailed pieces of information. There are a few photographs of people.

I learnt things and found writers new to me to seek out such as Irwin Shaw.

Some escaped, some collaborated with the Nazis, some fought them and others just voiced educated opinions and indulged their appetites.. Reading about them raises the question of how you would yourself act and how to decide who to trust in such perilous times.

Mary Fletcher

Music of the Mind Yoko Ono

 Yoko Ono ‘Music of the Mind’ 2024

This book accompanied the exhibition at Tate Modern.  Feb to Sept 2024,

‘Music of the Mind’ has contributions by various writers who give their own takes on Yoko Ono’s art and it includes pieces she wrote  and some of her lyrics. There are photographs, many including Yoko as a young artist, and the emphasis is on telling her early life and her most famous works from the sixties and seventies.
Her pages of the words ‘Peace is Power’ in various languages printed on turquoise blue paper form one section.

I attended an extensive exhibition by Yoko Ono  at The Baltic in 2008 which included much of the same work but I could not find it mentioned in this book.

I have also read about her life before but there are new pieces of information here such as her early interest in drama at school , that she was treated in a mental hospital in Japan for a month 1962, and that she and John Lennon performed with jazz musicians in Cambridge 1969.

There is some emphasis on her feminist views with thought provoking quotations such as,
‘If you keep hammering anti-abortion
We’ll tell you no more masturbation for men
Every day you’re killing living sperms , in billions
So how do you feel about that, brother.’

I would have liked more about  her more recent work, which has continued and goes on into her nineties.

What a phenomena she is. She seems to have been able to join the art scene in New York with ease, coming from a wealthy Japanese background but wanting to be anti establishment and fitting in with the exciting times, experimenting with sound and ideas and then being brave in exploiting her increased fame when working with John Lennon.
She found music a great help in coping with grief after her beloved John was murdered and she has kept going with various projects, always trying to involve the audience and take a positive attitude directed to the cause of peace and personal awareness.

If you like Yoko Ono or are intrigued by her you will enjoy this new book.

 

 

The Horned Whale by Jeremy Schanche

The Horned Whale by Jeremy Schanche

The Horned Whale is a collection of two stories, a novel, some poems and a ‘Dream Manifesto’
There are even three drawings.

I began with the poems which being shorter are easier to digest.
I liked the manifesto with its echo of the American constitution.

My favourite was the ‘Ghost-Hulk of a Phantom’ which swept me willingly along a flood of allteration, lists, fantasy, made up and foreign words, rhythmic repetition and  humorous surprises in a pleasurable ride to its hero-rescuing climax which made me laugh out loud in a delighted way.

The other two parts are similarly fanciful. The Kramvil has more plot but even then that  could be summarised in a few sentences- it’s the whirling deluge of language that is striking. Occasionally certain words I found over used such as ‘pullulating’.
Again the hero encounters physical dangers and falls for a beautiful woman with whom he exits the tale in a rosy tinted halo of glory.
There’s not much character development or emotional enquiry.
It’s not the sort of writing I usually go for but it’s remarkable, unusual and flows under its own head of romantic steam.

Jeremy Schanche lives in Penzance and as well as writing is a versatile musician.


 

President Chimp by Jeremy Schanche

 President Chimp is a short work presenting the escape from Detroit zoo of a monkey who takes over the Presidency of America.
Jeremy Schanche satirizes the Chimp story colourfully, showing us a creature bearing grudges from his past treatment, wildly unpredictable  and dangerous, ludicrous and grotesque.
’Chimpy hugged the limelight  and worked the crowd with a deftness of touch that made Ziggy Stardust seem a bumbling amateur dramatist in a village panto.’
Along the way the author manages to bring in serious swipes at the death penalty, the Mexican border wall, built with non Union Labour, the English Prime Minister, Bojo, etc.
 England is ‘a tiny island swarming with a bizarre mixture of effete intellectuals  and turnip munching medieval peasants,’
Elton John comes in for criticism and whistling ability is seen as a sign of humanity. I wasn’t so keen on that as I cannot whistle but I have heard the author is accomplished in that art.
Chimp flies into rages,’his face quivered in simian mania, going from pale orange to deepest  darkest blood red, like a tequila sunrise.’
It’s this inventive turn of phrase that carries the narrative flying along to what I found to be a satisfying conclusion.

There are two more sections in the book which contrast dramatically with the first section.
In ‘More of everything’ the author gives us a fable about wanting  to make one’s senses develop and how the hero comes to a profound conclusion. This fable can go off at any tangents, surprising the reader.

The third section, ‘Into the  thunderbolt  land’  takes us to Tibet, the Chinese invasion, and the quest for Buddhist enlightenment.
What a contrast- kindness and transcendence.

Thus the book gives us three levels of existence, from lurid gross materialism, through surreal sensations to acceptance, ending with spiritual enlightenment.
The journey leaves this reader in no doubt which is preferable.



Jeremy Schanche recently also published a compendium of writings called ‘The Horned Whale’

Malgorzata Mirga-Tas at Tate St Ives until Jan 5 2025

 

Malgorzata Mirga -Tas at Tate St Ives, 18 October 2024 to 5 January 2025 

 

 

 

 

This Polish artist has been the first Roma to represent her country at the Venice Biennale 2022 and Tate St Ives are showing her first major exhibition in UK

 

 

 

Malgorzata  Mirga -Taz was at the Tate when I went, looking lovely in a glittering gold blouse and layered black skirt worn with boots. 

Unfortunately her well attended talk was inaudible. The acoustics at the gallery are terrible but I feel some experiment with mics and rehearsal could help. When I complained downstairs  they told me they remembered me making a similar complaint after the last talk.

It seems such an unforgivable loss that we have the artist there but technical problems are preventing her words from reaching us. 

Nowadays  regrettably we are not given a little booklet but there is a lot of information online and on the wall and a video with snatches of gypsy music.

The book is not arriving to buy until the end of October.

It’s an impressive looking show of large figurative works made with brightly coloured fabrics, some with 3D relief or attached jewelry.

I enjoyed it and was pleased to learn more about the Roma and that the artist is trying to rehabilitate the image of gypsies and make more widely known their persecution by the nazis.

She has used documentary photos and references to pictures by past artists to make her own, with help from other women - whose names are not given.

I have questions- why does she leave all the background grey and flat for the faces and arms, which are drawn on top in black?

I was interested to read about nazi prisoners but surprised they are then depicted in one case as a violinist with no violin, in another a tram driver with no tram.

The soviet regime is mentioned but there  is no hint of how Mirga-Tas sees that era.

Why no present day references to Roma life?

Can a gaily coloured image of a bear help in any way counter our disapproval of bears being trained in past times to dance?

Does recreating non - Roma stereotyped images of gypsies in any way change our view of them?

Do the large dark backgrounds work as the artist thinks to imply the images of people are emerging from a dark past?

It’s so difficult to make political points in imagery - so here the labels can become more poignant, informative  and  interesting than the pictures.

I found myself recalling how DH Lawrence wrote of gypsies, how they were depicted by Sven Berlin and Laura Knight, and how they fare in today’s society in UK.

Of course it’s Tate’s habit to generally feature one star artist so any comparisons or contemporary news stories are left to the audience to recall or research.

I’d like an area for these avenues to be referenced and discussed in the show - but at least as a member of one of Tate’s Look groups I will have the opportunity to do this later.

Will local Roma people be encouraged to attend and record  their reactions?

 The fact of the exhibition has roused my engagement with Roma issues but has the work rather than the labels said anything beyond to ask one to look at the nice pictures?  

 Could it have done ?

'Flora'at Penlee House

 

Flora, curated by Kurt Jackson - 150 years of environmental change in Cornwall, 9 0ctober - 11 January 2025, Penlee House in Penzance, Cornwall.

This show is a collaboration between painter Kurt Jackson and curator Katy Herbert.

 

 

 

 

 

 Harold Harvey 1922 'Chy-an-Mor'

 

What a bright idea - environmental concerns being the popular theme now in art circles - to take over 50 past paintings of Cornish landscape and contrast them with Kurt Jackson’s new paintings of the same places, adding information about the ecological changes that have taken place over many years.

 

 

 

 

Kurt Jackson  'Green and leafy Chyenal Scent of water mint, wrens chatter in the willow carr' 2024

 

At first I felt resistant to reading the long tracts of information but I gradually warmed to it and took in the information about what plants have disappeared or become rare and how climate change is affecting the landscape.

I ended up wishing there was a book of the show but there are no plans for one.

I also noticed how painting has changed from the soft gentle observations of the Newlyn school to Jackson’s brighter colours put on with their own elan and detail.

How frames have altered from carefully crafted carved gilded wonders to simple white wood.

These quietly observational ways of painting exist extensively in the western world.

It’s quite something to put your own pictures next to these old favourites but Kurt Jackson has his own equal attention and delicacy.

Interestingly he has avoided pricing his work but given details of how to enquire about buying them. 

The older revered paintings are from collections including Penlee’s own.

Anima Mundi , St.Ives, exhibits Joy Wolfenden Brown and Carlos Zapata

 Anima Mundi is a serious art gallery. They hang the paintings with big gaps between them and small numbers that refer to titles on the information sheet which is printed in a tiny font, grey on grey, with quotations from famous people and art world jargon and they don’t use red dots to indicate sales. The prices are also serious - from £1,300 to £16,800.

At present, until October 19 for six weeks there are two very serious artists on show- Carlos Zapata being the filling on the middle floor between two floors of Joy Wolfenden Brown.

Joy Wolfenden Brown works she tells us spontaneously and spontaneously repeats an image of a lost looking afraid ghost - like woman. Apparantly I was not the only visitor to ask if she looks like this and she does a bit. I was aware that  if I was still working as an art therapist I would be thinking this person is for some reason stuck. She says there are slight changes so I would be asking about them. Then I see she has worked as an art therapist herself for ten years - so then I wonder does she interrogate herself for reasons why this image obsesses her?
There are some other works, very darkly indistinct with birds and feathers in them so perhaps the artist is beginning to break new ground.

Carlos Zapata is a skilled wood carver. Here he also returns repeatedly to a similar image - to kneeling supplicant small figures, many with no arms or feet. Colour is used on the wood, sometimes pale touches, sometimes intense hues or silver. We are told he recently suffered the death of a parent but which  one is strangely not disclosed. Maybe that’s why his recent figures seem so isolated and immobile, injured and joyless.They are carved in three dimensions but I feel drawn to only seeing them from the front. They seem like statues suited to a chapel, for contemplative introspection.

Comment in the visitors’ book is admiring and as written on tripadviser the work in this  gallery certainly offers a change,  in its gloomy exalted misery,  from the relentless optimism of many of the holiday souvenirs in other shows in other less serious shows in town.