Category: Art and Photographic History
Categories
Beautiful Lithuania
Many years ago my French Master, somewhat radically inclined, offered to teach me Chinese. The condition was that I had first to ensure my French was up to scratch. Unfortunately I was scarcely up to the mark with the language but have in recent years got as far as reading a very easy version of Flaubert with an immense amount of pleasure. I did however have at least one lesson of Chinese and can still recall one or two phrases about writing a character on a blackboard. I also recall seeing on my schoolmasters desk a few copies of a magazine called “China Reconstructs”.
In a very different study overlooking St Ives harbour and bay, I saw a copy of the same journal. This was the study of a friend’s father who had been a brave member of the Chinese Inland Mission. One of the achievements of this famous organisation was to encourage the unbinding of women’s feet. A task interrupted by the Japanese invasion. There was a magnificent cat wandering around the house called “La Fu” and meals at my friends were frequently taken using chop sticks.
Large parts of Cornwall have unfortunately been subject to neglect and decline. A situation which appears to have got still worse under the Tories and due to Brexit. Much reconstruction of public services is urgently needed to avoid further poverty, ill-health and decline. The view below shows another side to Cornwall but unfortunately is all too common.
This is by my friend Ursula Ghee Wieckowska, who lives on the Island of Lewis not far from Stornaway
Snow Hills
March is turning out to be the month of
Blue skies sun and brilliant snow
Not overwhelming snow
Pawprints made by the cats
Prints by the chickens crows and ducks
Then this morning all the prints were gone
It must have snowed in the night
Glistening crystals of snow now
Covering the ground smooth and white
By tonight the garden will be covered in prints again
Then over to the east the hills
Beautiful white covered in snow
The sun shining on them
Showing off their features
From a distance we see
The individual hills
Stac Polly Cul Beag
Cul Mor Sulliven
Canisp
Different shapes
Different personalities
They only appear on some days
This week we have been blessed
Everyday against the blue sky
They stand on the horizon
They stand on the sea
In the town the roads are wet
The traffic has melted the snow
And the black tarmac appears
Some snow is just lying
On the verges and roofs and
In between the trees
I head home and will look at the snow
Through the car windows
Then through my house windows
As long as the sun shines
Then it will disappear into the dark
To come again hopefully tomorrow
When I open the curtains in the morning
I will once again be blinded by the
Sun on the white snow
The London Review of Books editions that arrive every two weeks seem to vary in their interest value. The most recent edition, however, grabbed my interest in a short article on the life of the German Expressionist, George Grosz. Then I went on to read about the amazing Adolfo Kaminsky, the brave photographer and forger on behalf of radical causes. Two good articles and it puts you in the mood to read the rest before the next explosion of magazines arrive with more information having to be processed. (LRB Volume 45 Number 4 -16th Februrary 2023)
Thomas Meaney has visited the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and his review of Grosz is particularly interesting from a psychological viewpoint with informative quotations from Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt; the former claiming that Grosz’s caricatures were not satire but reportage. His transition to America in 1933 marked a point at which he seems to have attempted to subdue, what he considered, his former arrogance and nihilistic tendencies. Yet he seemed out of sympathy with American society, its cultural interests and the false persona he felt he had to adopt in his teaching of drawing. By 1954 he appears to be in some sort of deep decline. Meaney quotes the Dadaist and friend Schlicter –
“Rarely have I seen a person with such self-destructive rage…..It is a depressing spectacle to see a man whom one once cherished go to the dogs in this way.”
Returning to Berlin where he died in 1958 seems to have exacerbated matters still keenly aware of past issues unresolved.
Secondly, last week there was a dearth of anything but Tory supporting newspapers at Sainsbury’s so I decided to buy the Morning Star. I came across an interview by Chris Searle with the veteran Bassist Dave Green. He and his friend, Evan Parker have just issued a new CD called Raise Four.
The clip above is almost 20 years old but in this recent interview, Green highlights his favourite artists; Roland Kirk, Coleman Hawkins and among British Jazz musicians, Bruce Turner. Green has been a dedicated anti-racist and an ardent believer in constant experimental freedom to develop his craft.
The third article to engage my attention, in this case by the vivid illustrations, was in Saturday’s Guardian and may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/16/women-abstract-expressionism-whitechapel-gallery-krasner-sobel
This article is a review of the Women’s Abstract Exhibition (1940-1970) to be found at the Whitechapel Gallery until 7th May. I particularly was taken by the dark variegated shades of Li Fang’s work of 1969.
penwithlit 