Etel Adnan: The Weight of the World

Etel Adnan (b.1925 in Beirut) started to paint while teaching philosophy at the University of California in the 1950s, after studying at the Sorbonne and Harvard.

Her early works were largely abstract, squares of colour applied directly from the tube. She was interested in the immediate beauty of colour, and these works focus on the tension between colour, landscape, architecture, abstraction.  Mount Tamalpais in California - she moved to the area, north of San Francisco, in the 1970s - became the subject matter of many paintings, some of which are on show. "It was my point of reference, it was like a pole," she says, "when I saw it I felt at home." Not just a physical landmark, "emotionally also".

Hero (via)

Mountain (2012)

"From the 1960s until the present day Adnan has also made tapestries, inspired by the feeling and colour of the Persian rugs of her childhood. Never translating existing paintings into tapestries, she uses specific designs for her textile works. Over the course of the 1960s, Adnan moved away from purely abstract forms and, in 1964, discovered ‘leporellos’, accordion-folded sketchbooks in which she could mix drawing with writing and poetry. Often working in series, her painting continued to move between recognisable and imagined forms, revealing her sensitivity to colour and shape extracted from the environments in which she found herself." (from the gallery website, where you can see a video overview of the show)

The tapestries are the largest works in the show

The leporellos in the show fall into two categories - purely visual, and text-based.

Note the large screen in the background

New York, May 20th, 1990

The works from 1995-2014 are much smaller in scale than the earlier works; some are composed around red squares, others around horizon lines and things that could be suns or moons -

 The red colour is where she starts - "I don't know why, it's my instinct. But often I make an effort ... otherwise there would be a red square in every one of them."

Untitled, 1964

A group of 20 works, painted specifically for the exhibition, are called The Weight of the World -

(via)

The show runs till 11 September at Serpentine Sackler Gallery. At "the old Serpentine" is Alex Katz, and this year the Pavilion -

is joined by four Summer Houses this year. (Haven't seen them yet.)

"Where the shadows are so deep"

The title of Imran Qureshi's exhibition at the Curve, Barbican (till 10 July) is a line from the great revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

He decided to make a series of miniature paintings for this huge space.

They look beautiful from a distance, but when you come close to them, they are not that comfortable. (The gummed tape left around the edges is a clue.)

 There is something threatening in each of the 35 paintings.

(The trees are like characters - you find yourself making up a story as you move from one to another.)

Traditional miniature paintings used a curve as a horizon line, and he used this to connect with the massive Curve.

He added just a few other interventions - the red bloody areas are meant to take you inside the painting, to make you feel you are part of the painting. Yet they are overlaid with stylised leaves that look like blossoms.

You can see reflections on what is happening around the arist, either on the political or social level, or the personal level.

 Nobody knows if the beautiful landscape, full of life, will become a bloody site of terror.

Towards the end of the exhibition the colours become darker, with a lot of black used. And the gold is increasingly overlaid by violent marks.

Back on the street, these violently-marked poster spaces in the tube station echo the pairing of the miniatures -

Poetry Thursday - as freedom is a breakfastfood by e e cummings

selected poems 1923-1958 "...made by the author from eleven booskofpoems"

as freedom is a breakfastfood

or truth can live with right and wrong

or molehills are from mountains made

—long enough and just so long

will being pay the rent of seem

and genius please the talentgang

and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow

or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair

and every finger is a toe

and any courage is a fear

—long enough and just so long

will the impure think all things pure

and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind

and robins never welcome spring

nor flatfolk prove their world is round

nor dingsters die at break of dong

and common’s rare and millstones float

—long enough and just so long

tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy’s the voice

down shall go which and up come who

breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs

deeds cannot dream what dreams can do 

—time is a tree(this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

- e e cummings (via)

Cummings (1894-1962) wrote so many interesting poems - interesting, I think, because of his linguistic trickery. Tricks like juxtaposed words to make new ones, esoteric (if that's the right word) punctuation, grammatical innovation (eg, using "which" and "who" as nouns), eye-catching spatial organisation, and of course his trademark lack of capital letters. I wonder whether he would have had interesting conversation with Noah Webster, the author of the dictionary (published 1828) that solidified American spelling, and Melvil Dewey of the decimal system of library organisation (published 1876), who was an advocate of even more radical spelling reform. Perhaps they all would have come to blows! 

from p.43

As is, or was, conventional for poetry books, there is an index of first lines, which acts as an alphabetical table of contents, as very few poems have separate titles.

Britain from the Air exhibition

The "Britain from the Air" touring exhibition fills the sunken garden of the Royal Geographical Society, Kensington, until 12 July. Then it travels to Birmingham.

"...from the air"

The rusting sea forts of the Thames estuary, remnants of WW2 -

 Click on the image to read the description - or try this link -

The photo of the "hawthorn heart" was accompanied by a description panel full of information about apples! -

The remains of the village on St Kilda make a wonderful abstract pattern -

"There is evidence that people have lived on and visited St Kilda for thousands of years, since the Stone Age. Traditionally the community relied on seabirds for food because it was too stormy to fish regularly. They developed special ways of catching the birds; wind-drying and storing them in small stone huts called cleits. More than 1400 of these remain as relics of the past on the islands. The remains of the village with its layout of stone houses, dry-stone walled fields and enclosures can be found on the largest island, Hirta. The local Soay sheep, unchanged on the island for more than 3000 years, are the most primitive breed surviving in Europe. "

The exhibition is also online -  almost 100 pictures, and their description panels, to peruse.

Meanwhile, back at the flat...

Work is proceeding on the floor/ceiling of the larger rooms, getting them level and secure -

 While Tom spends two weeks gadding about to music festivals in Serbia and Barcelona, his workers - and a plasterer - will be making it all good.

As you might imagine, there is dust everywhere, despite dustcloths etc. All the plants have been moved into the bathroom, which looks like a tropical jungle, nice.

I was tasked with packing away some of the "delicate stuff" and found a few pieces to put out on the wall -

Each letting-go is a release from the tyranny of things!

Drawing Tuesday - Golders Hill Park

Knowing there was a little aviary and zoo area, I thought to draw the animals, but even the ring-tailed lemurs and their network of ropes didn't tempt me.

Wandering around, I came upon The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly by Jake and Dinos Chapman -

The sun was coming out, and I set to work, trying to "really see" just one, from different angles -

and then to capturevthe others, quickly -

That looks too much like a child's drawing for my liking, but Sue offered reassurance: "you can work on it some more at home". As if I was likely to  get round to that!

[Thought I'd have a go at this point in writing the blog post - but a bit of a drama involving a gas leak happened just then. Consequences uncertain, but the situation not good. Thus does Life get in the way of Art.]

Back at the park, some of the choices of subject were determined by being able to find a nice bench to sit on -

Carol's studies of heuchera

Sue's capricious tree (she found it tricky to keep track of which branch was where)

Janet's statue - a cupid juggling fish - drawn from a distance

Adjoining Golders Hill Park is The Pergola, built in 1906 and largely restored after this article was written; faded glory it may be, but moody and eerie? maybe on a dank day -

Sunday in town

Regent Street was closed for an event - "Transported by Design" - part of a larger campaign, "an inspiring showcase of events and activities to raise awareness of TfL's rich design heritage", that runs till the end of the year.

It certainly didn't match up to the collection of vintage buses that filled the street two years ago, but there were also some old black taxis and a 1927 tube carriage, the first standardised design -

Why the no smoking signs on the windows, though?  These carriages went out of service in the 1960s - and smoking was allowed till 1984  (and on platforms till 1987).

I turned my camera toward the sky -

and to people using their own cameras -

Don't know why, but collections of feet and legs often find their way into the camera -

Then it was off to the RA Summer Exhibition. The family photography in the courtyard was delightful -

And in the show, the first thing that caught my eye - the sumptuously charcoal'd trees, hung high up - was the work that most appealed. Such a wonderful surface, even at that distance. The jagged lines set up a strange tension with the large square painting underneath -

The difraction in perspex cubes continues to perplex me; sometimes the placement of the cube in the space is what makes for good effects, bringing the background "into" the cube  -

I've saved half the show for later. From what Olga has written, there are good things yet to be found.

Drawing at Kew Gardens

It's not that I'm besotted with drawing on the ipad, it's just that I don't seem to be doing a lot else in the drawing line of things at the moment. And taking the ipad along gives me an excuse, if one is needed, to sit in the warmth and clatter of a cafe with an almost-empty cup of coffee.

On the way to Kew Gardens I tried drawing some "travel-lines" -

Is it the surface of the ipad that's too smooth, or is it the track? Very uninteresting! The thin lines near the top are the result of some experimentation with "dynamic" options ... hoping to overcome the smoothness and get some bumpy interest into the lines.

What works for me is adding in the writing - zooming (spreading?) to 1000% or so means that a chubby finger - and thin line width, 2 or 3 pixels - can write most delicately.

At Kew, unexpectedly torrential rain gave time for more sitting inside and more experimentation - this pot plant on a nearby table was done from scratch - ie, no photo underlying it and "merely" being traced. It's all one layer ... just like drawing on a bit of paper.

oops, suddenly I see there's a bit of stem missing! Also, it might help with balance to make the pot a solid colour -

Expect the unexpected

Like - spilling a mug of tea over your worktable. On a flat surface, water spreads fast! Fortunately there were quite a few things littering the worktable that caught the flood - like the lists made over the past month and more, which I was checking to see if everything had been done eventually -

Well, if it didn't get done, and it was important enough to need doing, someone will remind me.

The important thing is that these lists, to do with getting Tony's photos ready for the "American journey" exhibition, are no longer needed -

The private view of the show is this afternoon, and in 15 minutes I'll be gathering my bags and heading for the train.

Which leaves time for a little reflection on the state of our worktables. At the moment mine is remarkably clear, just a few pot plants needing either repotting or recycling, and a couple of lamps, and the clock and the box and my breakfast plate and coffee cup and the camera and the computer and mouse. Lots of bare "wood" (turns out it's veneer - the years have not been kind to it). 

Some of the previous contents of the tabletop are in the bin, but most are on the shelf beside the table, that shelf that always needs sorting. (Next time, the work table should have a drawer into which clutter can be swept.) 

The items we keep on the table, ready for use, are our tools and materials. I would like to suggest that one of these tools should be - space.

Keeping space to hand takes discipline, of course, and some people have useful routines or habits of clearing up at the end of the day, or the start of the day. Another useful habit in this regard is the habit of noticing when space is needed, and doing a tidy-up midstream. How long would that take? My unexpected desk clearance took all of five minutes - including the mop-up. It's taken much longer to write about it.

And I found this lovely card, which you can hardly see in the photo -

The image is Syaw (Fish Net) by Regina Pilawuk Wilson - see it here. The drawings inspired by it were made on some Sunday afternoon, probably in 2015. I thought I'd had enough of them, but have now rescued them from the bin and will, yes really will, use them as covers for little notebooks - the sort of notebook you put in a handbag and make lists in. 

It's on my list. A 2-hour project (find glue, find paper....).

ipad drawing, Home project

Having taken the photograph at home, I take the ipad to a coffee shop and turn the photo into a drawing -

Each colour is on a separate layer, perhaps to be changed later. What you can't change, but only redraw, is the thickness of the lines.

Adding a filled layer behind everything gives a quite different effect -

Also the colours have all been desaturated, ie made white.

(This post is linked to Off The Wall Fridays. Some background on my ipad drawings and Home project can be found here.)