Review of Live your questions now by Magdalen Chua

By Magdalen Chua

Live your questions now is a survey exhibition of artists over 60 years old at the Mackintosh Museum of The Glasgow School of Art. The title is taken from a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, on responding to the uncertainties of life by living out one’s questions, opening the possibility of living one’s way into the answer. Within the exhibition, several artists reflect on the intersections between art and life through the way the body, metaphorically and physically, is experienced and located in space.

Sam Ainsley, (Left) Untitled, 2011, dimensions variable; (Right top) The darkened splinterecho brainstream tide..., 2011, acrylic paint and print on canvas, 102 x 102 x 7cm; (Right bottom) Where there are hopes, there will always be fear, 2011, acrylic paint and print on canvas, 102 x 102 x 7cm; courtesy of Mackintosh Museum

Sam Ainsley’s (b. 1950, lives and works in Glasgow) works convey the relationship of the body to larger spatial contexts, in ways that express the psychological state. Against the corner of the gallery, Untitled comprises two outlines of Scotland with a successive sequence of word associations, such as “insecurity, knowing, disbelief, belief, love…” written around the perimeter. Viewed from a distance, the outlines appear as lungs of the body with the words as capillaries, making the emotions expressed by the words as the lifeline that courses through the country.

Lygia Pape, Tteia 1.A, 2011, gold thread, copper nails, 314cm x 321cm; courtesy of Mackintosh Museum

In the other corner of the gallery, the viewer’s body becomes the medium of experience between material and space in Tteia, or web, by Lygia Pape (Brazil, b.1927, d.2004). Assembled from a set of instructions, gold thread is strung to form a fluid and seamless structure that wraps, compresses yet also enlivens the spaces within and around. Pape was part of the Concrete movement and its reaction, Neo-Concretism, that sought to integrate a work within space as a reflection of how art functions in life, in way that opened the role for the viewer’s physical interaction and interpretation.

Helena Almeida, (Left) BAÑADA EN LÁGRIMAS #14, 2009, framed black and white photograph, 175 X 114.4 X 4.7 cm, (Centre) BAÑADA EN LÁGRIMAS #13, 2009, framed black and white photograph, 175 X 114.4 X 4.7 cm, (Right) Untitled, 2010, video, b&w, sound, 18', edition of 5; courtesy of Mackintosh Museum

This Neo-Concretist approach towards art-making influenced Helena Almeida (Portugal, b.1934), whose photography and video works have experimented with means to extend elements, from colour or the body, out of a confined space. Two photographs from the series BAÑADA EN LÁGRIMAS, or bathed in tears, are of Almeida encountering her reflection in a pool of water on the ground. The photographed action enlarges the space and view above Almeida, as a window to the world beyond the physical limits of the frame.

Against the backdrop of a rising number of survey shows of young contemporary artists, Live your questions now presents artists whose lives, as seen through their practice across decades, bear out philosophical challenges through persistent inquiry. The exhibition runs till 1 October 2011, and also includes works by Alasdair Gray, Joan Jonas, Ana Jotta, Michael Kidner and Běla Kolářová.

Review of AHM Symposium 2 @ National Galleries by Arcadia Now

Better late than never, here's my review of AHM's second symposium in a series of three on the state of art and culture in Scotland today. It took place at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, on 2 April 2011.

Any discussion staged now on the state of art and culture today is set against a backdrop of anxiety. And don’t we all know it. If it isn’t funding cuts, it’s the death of criticism, or the rocky relations of art and education. But even as we pencil another furrowed brow in the diary, it still seems important to have these discussions. Undoubtedly, artists need to voice their concerns. And it’s good to talk.

Through their Research Residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, AHM - Sam Ainsley, David Harding and Sandy Moffat -are staging a series of three symposia. Their aim is “to raise the profile of Scottish artists in the public domain whereby they can make a more significant contribution to the public life of Scotland, and to directly influence politicians and institutions of the vital importance of the arts to our society.”

After the first symposium addressed the situation on home turf, the second featured presentations by Scottish artists working internationally. Introducing the event as Chairperson, Sandy Moffat asked: “What is truly distinctive about Scottish art? Where is Scotland in the world order? Can this small state exist at the level of big ones?”

Departing from the broader question of art’s status in society, most of the speakers addressed this theme of Scottishness. Dean of CalArts Thomas Lawson spoke of artists as “essentially rootless” by profession: they relocate in search of a network that will sustain them and support their practice. As such, he sees their Scottishness as unimportant.

Artist Jim Mooney painted a vivid picture of his formative experiences at Edinburgh College of Art and then the Royal College of Arts. He had felt personally liberated by the College’s embrace of the avant-garde, and expounded the merits of an art school education. For Mooney, mergers between universities and art schools – such as the imminent one between ECA and Edinburgh University – are seriously detrimental to art education.

Following this talk, comments from the floor were concerned with the art world’s increasing academicisation. Sandy Moffat urged: “Let’s have more questions about art.” But when such questions were asked, they seemed to be met with little response. Sogol Mabadi suggested that artists should allow outsiders more opportunity to see artwork during the making process. By making art less exclusive, we might help to protect its future. Speaking from the panel, Peter Hill said briefly that this might be one way – but he didn’t advocate only one form of action. Of the others he would adopt, he made no mention.

Unfortunately, this rather strange exchange was typical of the symposium. Presentations were mostly interesting, and the discussion was engaging. But it was almost as though AHM had preconceived ideas about what they wanted from their audience, and we weren’t fulfilling them. In spite of their aims and paper handouts, their agenda for the symposium remained obscured.

Concluding the day, Moffat praised the value of having these discussions before adding sagely: ‘but we still have a long way to go’. While we would all acknowledge that art today faces problems, it’s an oversight to assume that we agree on what those problems are or what the desired situation would be. If artists wish us all to act in pursuit of a common goal, we must first be clear on what the problem is. As yet, there has been no census.

Jac Mantle

http://arcadianow.wordpress.com

Art review: Sam Ainsley & Roger Wilson by Susan Manfield - Scotsman

At Glasgow Print Studio, two artists delve into the scientific past referencing a biology text from nearly 100 years ago. Sam Ainsley, a co-founder of Glasgow School of Art's visionary MFA course, and Roger Wilson, current head of the School of Fine Art, relate their work to On Growth and Form, by Scottish biologist and mathematician D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Thompson's book, published in 1917, was crucial in pioneering understanding that natural growth followed mathematical principles. A new edition in the 1940s featured in the writings of art critic Herbert Read, which alerted many artists to its importance, including Henry Moore, Le Corbusier and Wilhemina Barns-Graham. It provided a valuable link between abstraction and the figurative world.

Ainsley and Wilson don't tell us what its importance is for them. They offer no preface or introduction to their show, indeed the labels don't even tell us whose work is whose (though it isn't hard to separate the two styles). Anyone who wants to know what the title means will have to discover D'Arcy Thompson on Wikipedia.

That aside, there are striking works here. Ainsley's large paintings, which combine acrylic with elements of print, are vivid and beautifully coloured. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was looking at microscopic images writ large, the secret geometry inside a leaf, the fantastical landscapes inside the human body, or the sub-microscopic maps and patterns of DNA. The poetic titles - Making a Heart Like Stone, Out of Redness Comes Kindness, The Beauty and Density of Life - suggest metaphors at work.

Her smaller collages feel more raw and personal. "I am scared" says the small silver handwriting in a piece called Ashes to Ashes. In The Crying Woman, the figure crouches, sobbing, under a vein-pattern of grey tree branches. A skull grimaces at us in Death Becomes Her.

I was left with feelings of vulnerability, sadness, resilience, as though a personal journey lurked not too far below the surface.

In Wilson's work, any such journey is much harder to trace. There are shapes and occasionally patterns here - often his canvases are oval, with interlinking ovals or circles - but whether they draw on elements of pattern in the natural world, we aren't shown. There is the abstractionist's refusal to yield to metaphor, stripping back to pure colour and form.

Two large works, Streaming and Arboretun, combine gesso and acrylic on board, layering up colours to create marble effects. They balance a sense of spontaneity and a sense of structure, as if the artist is striving for the freedom of the random, but finds that he brings his own structure to it, balancing one colour with its opposite.

These are mature, accomplished works, but a little background information wouldn't hurt. The artists are determined not to interfere in the relationship between the viewer and the work, but as a result there is nothing to introduce one to the other either. As viewers, we look for connections, patterns, narratives. D'Arcy Thompson would probably have said as much himself.

•Sam Ainsley & Roger Wilson until 15 May

Living Today exhibition review

A review of Living Today exhibition at Glasgow School of Art featuring work by David Harding

Sandy reviews Picasso: Peace and Freedom

Sandy Moffat will review Picasso: Peace and Freedom (Tate Liverpool 21 May - 30 August
2010, Albertina, Vienna 22 from September - 16 January 2011, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 11 February - 29 May 2011) in the Autumn edition of Perspectives,
the magazine of Scotland's Democratic Left.



Picasso: Peace and Freedom at the Tate Liverpool reveals Picasso as a politically and socially engaged artist, actively involved in politics and the Peace movement. After the Second World War, Picasso, already widely recognised as the world’s greatest living artist, emerged as a celebrated political figure - he was probably the most famous communist in the world - and hero of left-wing causes. He was a tireless campaigner for freedom and justice and his ‘Dove of Peace’ became the international emblem of the Peace Movement and a symbol of hope during the Cold War period. All of this proved acutely embarassing for the Western art world and as a result his political views were often ignored in the numerous exhibitions and publications produced during his lifetime and afterwards. The huge London exhibition at The Tate Gallery in 1960, organised by his friend and biographer, Roland Penrose, made no reference whatsoever to Picasso’s communist sympathies. If mentioned at all, it was as if Picasso’s joining the party was merely a gesture, not to be taken too seriously.




The Tate Liverpool exhibition demolishes this myth and shows that Picasso was a
committed party member, supporting and funding a range of humanitarian causes.The catalogue reproduces a cheque for 1 million francs (approx 50,000 pounds in today’s money) which he donated to striking miners in the Pas de Calais in 1948. Peter de Francia, formerly Professor of Painting at the RCA interprets this extraordinary act of generosity as reflecting Picasso’s anarchist belief in sharing whatever one had. The exhibition’s chief curator, Lynda Morris, has assembled a wealth of new material and makes a direct link between his art and his politics. Picasso’s habit of precisely dating his works means that each can be alinged with world events that were unfolding at the time, whether the Fascist victory and dictatorship in Spain, the Liberation of France, the Algerian War of Independence or the Cuban Missile Crisis. In doing so Morris also dismantles John Berger’s influential thesis, put forward in his Success and Failure of Picasso (1966) that Picasso had retreated from the world during his later years: that he had sold out to wealth and fame: that his work after 1945 represented a decline.

Sandy reviews Gunther Schuller at the Edinburgh Festival

My Edinburgh Festival highlight...without doubt the composer, conductor, and teacher Gunther Schuller, who conducted two concerts of American
music with the RSNO and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and took part
in a “conversation” with Jonathan Mills, the Festival Director. He was, he said, a late starter, not becoming interested in music until he reached the age of 11...but five years later at the tender age of 16 he made his debut with the New York Phil, playing horn in Toscanini’s legendary war-time performance of Shostakovitch’s 7th Symphony...before joining the Met Opera Orchestra as first horn in 1944. He described New York in the forties and fifties as ‘a golden age’ for all of the arts...and Jazz, to which he was particularly drawn, experienced a remarkable period of development...from Swing to Bebop and beyond. There were 127 active Jazz Clubs at the end of the forties... now for example, there are only 7. No wonder Schuller fears for the future of the music...indeed for all music of quality as the relentless barrage of commercially driven “pop” pouring forth from a globalised culture industry intent on maximizing profits, literally obliterates all other forms of music. Schuller talked about what might constitute a typical day for him at that time. Opera rehearsal in the morning...afternoon in New York Public Library studying scores...evening performances of Figaro or Rosenkavalier ...afterwards, ending up in a Jazz Club. In 1949 he recorded with the Miles Davis nonet on what became the famous Birth of the Cool album and went on to coin the term ‘Third Stream’ to describe his own compositions that combined elements of Western art music and jazz. Schuller’s teaching career is also worthy of mention...at the Manhattan School of Music in the early 1950’s...Professor of Composition at Yale from 1964 to 1967 and then for the following ten years, President of the New England Conservatory where he promoted the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington - black musicians hitherto ignored by the American musical establishment. His many awards include a Pulitzer Prize (1994) and the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997).

Schuller’s concert with the RSNO featured Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait and the Fourth Symphony of Charles Ives. Although probably written between 1909 and 1916 the symphony remained unperformed until it’s belated premiere in 1965. Three conductors were needed on that occasion, such is the complexity of parts of the score...multitudinous polyrhythyms, quarter-tone harmonies, and countless tunes. A percussion group, pianos, bells, gongs, continues independently throughout the transcendent final movement. Is it possible that such a complex score be conducted by only one person? Schuller explained that as a performing musician he was able to figure out ways of overcoming the countless difficulties involved...even though it still can take half an hour or so of experimenting, for some sections of the orchestra to figure out the best way to play particular passages in time. It should be said that Schuller stopped the applause at the end of the performance and told the audience “ some of that music was out of time”.

With the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Schuller performed what he
termed as jazz masterpieces, all notated by himself...works by Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey and Gil Evans...including the Miles Davis/Gil Evans version of Gerswhin’s Porgy and Bess (again in Schuller’s own notation and again it should be mentioned that Schuller played horn on the original 1958 recording).....works which he claimed were the equal of the great classical composers such as Bach and Haydn. Schuller’s performing ideas are interesting in that he believes in an authentic recreation of the original...he is disinclined to tamper with or update the unique sound that Duke Ellington’s band made in the 1930’s or 1940’s...the important thing is to play those pieces as accurately as possible. As he puts it “ the original music is so great that it stands on a par with a Beethoven symphony or a Rachmaninov concerto ” and as a footnote to the high musical standards attained by jazz musicians he said he couldn’t really think of a better singer than Sarah Vaughan...an opinion Simon Rattle has also
endorsed in a recent interview.

As a young man he got to know Ellington and had the privilege of staying with him in Chicago for a week in the mid 1940’s, and was able to study his compositional methods at close hand. Ellington’s special sense of colour...often giving the highest notes in the ensemble to the baritone sax, the lowest sounding instrument...was explained in detail as was the Duke’s
use of modern European harmony, including bitonality, polytonality and
even, in one instance, atonality.

Once again, the Edinburgh Festival has had the vision to bring to Scotland an exceptional artist and communicator, whose ability to reveal unheard of musical vistas has enhanced our lives. It must have been quite a relevatory experience for the young musicians of the Scottish National Jazz Orcestra to have worked with such a warm hearted legend. Next year sees the publication of the 85 year old Schuller’s autobiography...I can’t wait.

Sandy Moffat