White

Snow lines

A white cloud descends on the city

On a day when you wake up and it has been snowing, when you begin thinking about drawing, you tend to think of white and black. Drawing is at its most abstracted when made out of this basic opposition. When drawing, the ground is white and the white is usually made of paper. The marks that are put onto the ground are black or at least darker than the white ground, either made of ink or a dry substance such as charcoal. Rarely of course are actual drawings this easily categorised, the whites of various papers are never mid white, they are warm or cool, tinted towards yellow or green or blue. Blacks are rarely black, they are dark purples, browns or greys, but in some Platonic universe, drawings are always black marks on white paper. However when nature draws, it is often the opposite way round, white blanks out what lies underneath, it being the ground that is black or coloured and marks are made when that ground breaks through its white covering. 

A line drawn in the snow by a dry stone wall

I have just read Han Kang's 'The White Book', a book that begins with a list:

Swaddling bands

Newborn gown

Salt

Snow

Ice

Moon

Rice

Waves

Yulan

White bird

'Laughing whitely'

Blank paper

White dog

White hair

Shroud

Han Kang reminds us that white is not just a colour, it is at the same time an absence of colour, a carrier of particular physical meanings that are just as much embedded into the word, 'white', as the colour. I write these words lying in bed upon a white sheet. The sheet needs changing, and it reminds me of the last word on Kang's list, the winding sheet, the burial shroud that will at some point cover me. Not this actual sheet, but one of its cousins, one specially made for the purpose of shrouding the body. Kang begins her list with white swaddling bands. Swaddling clothes were used to wrap infants tightly, so that the movement of their limbs was restricted. It was believed that this made them feel safe and that it took away the trauma of their tiny bodies suddenly feeling that they were surrounded by an open expanse of emptiness. The wrapping was supposed to mimic the feeling that they would have experienced when held tightly in their mother's womb. I wonder if the winding sheet operates in a similar way, reminding our dead selves of where we came from and offering us a final comforting hug. 
When we were children we would play 'ghosts', by wearing old sheets we could transform into spirits. We would cut slits where the eyes were and simply pull the sheet over us. Sometimes we would scare ourselves, what was play and pretence, for a moment became reality. That shift from one state to another is I believe central to the idea of animist thinking. Han Kang has a similar belief, but puts it so much more poetically. I'll set out in full page 77 of 'The White Book'.

Lace Curtain

Is it because of some billowing whiteness within us, unsullied, inviolate, that our encounters with objects so pristine never fail to leave us moved? Her passage through the frozen streets brings her to the building, where her gaze lifts to the first floor. To the flimsy lace curtain hanging there.
There are times when the crisp white of freshly laundered bed linen can seem to speak. When that pure-cotton fabric grazes her bare flesh, just there, it seems to tell her something. You are a noble person. Your sleep is clean, and the fact of your living is nothing to be ashamed of. Such is the strange comfort she receives, at that in-between time when sleep boarders wakefulness, when that crisp cotton bedsheet brushes her skin.

Han Kang finds something within us that chimes with the external world, in this case a 'billowing whiteness', one that I sometimes find in myself as I breathe in a new winter's day. The woman's conversation with the bed linen, echoing those conversations had thousands of years ago when we slept in caves, conversations with stones and old bones, animist thoughts that animated those stones and bones and gave them spiritual flesh and blood. 

I'm staring up at fast moving clouds, a mass of fleeing creatures, passing through before the storm that we all know is coming. Like the boy I once was I still see cloud creatures and landscapes unfolding and becoming and dissolving, a constant metamorphosis of one image after another, nature's Ovid, written by the wind and water droplets. 

The sun has just broken through and dazzled my eyes, so that I cant look any more, a dark shadow replacing the bright flash of white. Every white, in order to be seen as white, needs a dark companion to measure itself against. 

White and black are constantly swapping over in our perceptions. Rods set into our retinas are primarily responsible for vision in low-light conditions and are highly sensitive to light but do not discern colour. They easily become over stimulated and in effect get tired and so we see afterimages, whereby black becomes white and white becomes black, as the rods recharge themselves. Stare for a while at this negative face below.

When viewing focus on the crosshair in the middle for about one minute. After this, close your eyes. Briefly, an afterimage will appear. Subsequent blinking may bring it back, as it becomes less and less distinct. The larger you can make the image before staring at it the better. 

We also see the Colour White when all the cones at the back of the eyes are stimulated equally; when they are, the brain perceives white. We also perceive white when our rods are stimulated during low light conditions. Unlike cones, rods are able to detect light at a much lower level. This is why we see only black and white in dimly lit rooms. It is rare to see in a more mono-chromatic scale during the day, but there are times in winter when it snows, when it can feel as if the world has been reduced to white and black. 

When it snows it is as if a giant eraser is applied to the world. A whiteout being a dense blizzard especially in polar regions, however whiteout is also a white correction fluid for covering typing or writing mistakes. The two homographs (words that are spelt the same but which mean different things) are very closely related, snow, like whiteout fluid, does in effect erase everything that it covers. 

Paintings can be homographs too. White on White (1918) is an abstract oil-on-canvas painting by Kazimir Malevich. It is an example of a painting produced by Malevich when he was a member of the Russian Suprematism movement. His white on white reflects his interest in spirituality.

Kazimir Malevich: White on White

Mark Tansey: White on White

White on White, 1986 is a painting by Mark Tansey, whereby Eskimos meet Bedouins in a snow/sandstorm. His white on white reflects his interest in visual paradoxes. 

Piero Manzoni, Achrome1958

Manzoni wanted his white paintings or 'Achromes' to be valued for what they were as physical things, not what they might represent.
Pure white monochrome far from limiting artists, often opens up a rich and versatile area of investigation. As well as offering an arena for emotive and philosophical statements, it draws attention to techniques, materials, textures, surfaces and structures. It also emphasises the surface's responsiveness to light and shadow. White can suggest contemplation, emptiness, the void or infinite space. It can induce calm or terror, it offers itself up to the observer in such a way that it draws us in and at the same time draws us out.

Robert Rauschenberg 1951 White Painting

Robert Rauschenberg 1951 White Painting

Robert Rauschenberg's 'White Paintings' were a series of modular canvases, made with five variations: one-, two-, three-, four-, and seven-panels. They were intended to have pristine, smooth surfaces unmarred by handling, and some of them were hung as set décor for John Cage’s Theatre Piece No. 1. Cage said that the paintings were the inspiration for his signature “silent” composition 4'33" (1952). Rauschenberg's white canvases reflect his interest in creating a situation that allows people to closely observe the play of light and shadow. 

When snow falls, it is often the accompanying silence that impresses us most.

In the home, the most often encountered white images are those woven into the forms of the net curtain. 

Cupid: Net curtain

For myself net curtain images have even more meaning than white on white artworks. They evoke submerged domestic worlds, half seen images, fragmented glimpses of what is going on behind them.

A something half seen behind the net

We can never be sure of what we are seeing behind the net curtain and because of this for me they are a domestic version of the shadows on the wall of Plato's Cave. If he had been brought up and spent his early years in a council house in Dudley, and spent a lot of time at his grandmother's in Pensnett he would have often looked out of windows shrouded in net curtains, curtains designed to let light in, but to prevent anyone seeing what was going on inside. They could have given Plato an alternative metaphor, one that had the added value of a feeling tone wrapped around a particular idea of a working class home and 'domesticity'. 

In my mind's eye I see that flimsy lace curtain seen by Han Kang's protagonist, as a net curtain, one that I remember seeing many years ago, that was woven with white images of the cosmos; planets, comets, moons and stars, caught within a gigantic net, just as cupid is captured in the net curtain above. 

A net curtain drifts in front of my view like falling snow, I see the world through it, glimpses of possibilities, vision whited out but never completely and like the monster never actually seen, the world becomes more frightening in its possibility, than it ever could in reality. 

See also:

Drawing as the trace of a touch

Pencils and erasers 

Quantum entanglement

Drawing and philosophy: Mark Tansey

Abstraction and non figurative painting

Measuring emotions and colour

RIP Tony Tomlin

I have just heard that Tony Tomlin has died. He had Parkingson's and I hadn't seen him for a couple of years but every now and again I would still think about him and his work, as his life had often impacted upon mine, just as it had so many other people in the local arts community.

His art tutor, supporter and mentor at City College for many years Kevin O'Hare once fondly called him 'a craftsman and master of crappy materials'. Tony came to the old Jacob Kramer College (Soon to be Leeds College of Art and then Leeds Art University) in the 1980s and was on the part-time Fine Art and Craft course. He had a unique vision that never left him of a world where media celebrities cohabited with the people of Chapeltown; where his particular take on religion was mixed with his respect for art and artists and where the various tutors and lecturers of the courses he would take, were drawn and annotated by Tony, in his attempts to measure and tie down why these 'educated' people were themselves artists. He was often on a quest to establish the source of 'genius'. This could be the reason behind sports success or it could be that someone he knew personally had achieved a level of educational clout, that must have as far as he was concerned, have been because they too were a genius. The fact that they were now in a position to teach him, was something he needed to interrogate. His quest to find some sort of truth was at times heartbreaking, as it mixed an instinctive grasp of how society branded some people as outsiders and others as insiders, with a failure to see how he himself had been categorised. For many he was an outsider artist, but he was always trying to get the qualifications that would give him a licence to be a professional artist, an insider.

Tony operated as a reminder that the making of art in many ways cant be taught and that creativity is something that can be owned by anyone. He could make even the most basic drawing interesting, his comment on the drawing of scissors below is sort of blindingly obvious but at the same time confusing. He would have been proud of undertaking the exercise and his use of shadow is dramatic and clearly visually observed. He tells us, "DRAWN WITHOUT THE USE OF A RUBBER AND PENCIL", so how was it drawn then? Is this a biro drawing? The exercise was for Tony proof that he was undertaking a professional program of study and the shadow cast by the scissors is indeed proof that he could objectively observe the world around him when he had to.

Tony Tomlin: Scissors

Tony Tomlin: Johan Cruff

Tony was well known for his text and image work. They combine so that the text not just annotates the image, to both inform us of what it is and how Tony thinks about it, but it also develops a textural surface, one that his line drawing is physically embedded into. In the image above, 'Kick a ball' would have been a reference to playing football as a child on the street of Chapeltown, the dates are both Cruff's time of greatness as a player for 'Ajax of Amsterdam' and a time when Tony was young. Tony comments on his own attempt to create this homage, "BAD" ART FOR CRUFF. The way that Tony could seamlessly integrate a childlike memory with the facts of a football fan, his amused commentary on his own work and directness in drawing eyes, noses and mouths as symbols rather than portraiture, make his Johan Cruff drawing, a product of both an everyday experience for Tony and an attempt to portray an emblematic presence of a wonderful footballer. The wisps of hair, he has drawn, that frame the top of the image, do though somehow conjure up something of Cruff's look from that time; a boy like presence behind the genius who took ball control onto another level. Tony, as has already been pointed out, was a romantic, always trying to measure himself against the attainment of the lone artist.

Tony asked questions of those around him, questions that I found difficult to answer. Who was fooling who? In the 1940s Cecil Collins wrote his text 'The vision of the fool'. The fool was a role that Collins identified with the artist and the poet. He stated that 'the fool' embodies ‘the eternal virginity of spirit, which in the dark winter of the world, continually proclaims the existence of a new life, gives faithful promise of the spring of an invisible Kingdom, and the coming of light’. Was this what we all saw in Tony's work? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Tony was a messy man. I had problems with him sometimes, as he did at times present difficulties for others around him, particularly young women. He had no 'turn off switch' and his texts were at times very disturbing, a quasi religious take on women in particular could be read as misogynist. Whether he intended it or not, he could cause considerable offence. There was another issue and that was how his favourable reception by the established Leeds art community, was read by those who stood on the edge of that community and who felt slighted and mis-represented by the fact that Tony was black. I was asked several times why were white people praising the work of someone that was obviously mentally challenged? This was a difficult question to answer, did I not think that by showcasing his work black people as a whole were being positioned as 'outsider artists', who made work by some sort of intuition, as opposed to the reality of many black artists who made work to directly challenge and seek to highlight how a white dominated post-colonial patriarchal society had treated them. Exhibiting Tony's work, it was argued, was an easy way out for the white establishment, as it didn't challenge the status quo and reinforced the notion of the black artist as an outsider and not being capable of being a 'professional' practitioner.

Tony's work when read as a type of outsider art, did show us new ways of seeing things, but did this simply titivate the jaded taste buds of overly sophisticated, well educated arts professionals? I have in the past had to question myself several times, as to why I was fascinated by his work. Perhaps his very existence was a challenge to my own reading of myself as an artist.

I was spoken to once by a disgruntled artist, and told that some people within the Leeds arts community treated Tony as if he was a pet, 'Wasn't it lovely that he could perform such tricks?', they said. I thought they had read the situation in the wrong way, but I could also see why they might have. On the other hand I knew that several people treated Tony with great respect and that they really valued his vision and personal stance on what it was to be an artist. For some his work gave them a unique insight into a mind that was different, a visual mind that had emerged from the streets of Chapeltown, but which had also engaged passionately with the art educational system. It was an engagement that had thrown up a strange anomaly, the fact that originality and difference did not achieve high grades and that the reality was that to pass an 'A' level or other art qualification at that time, what you had to do was show that you knew who was part of the accepted art canon, and that you could in effect 'copy' the work or processes of those artists that you had academically studied. These were all hard questions for someone like myself who was firmly fixed into that art education system and who had a strong belief in the power of art as a transformative discipline.

I drew his portrait once. He looked at me strangely and made me uneasy. His glasses had such thick lenses that they reflected the outside world back at you. As I drew I fell into his whirlpool eyes and realised I had been hypnotised. He told me I was a genius and then asked me if I wanted to buy a piece of his work. Somewhere I still have his mono-print drawing of a Mexican wrestler's face mask, entitled 'Jesus goes to Berlin for Hardcore Music'. I don't know what it means but it challenges me in ways that Tracy Emin's mono-prints have never done. Jesus operating in disguise as a Mexican wrestler, opens up a reading of Christianity that I had not previously thought about, and perhaps that is the point; Tony for all his confusing ways, was always going to challenge us and our assumptions about the world. 

Tony Tomlin: 'Jesus goes to Berlin for Hardcore Music'. 

So rest in peace Tony, a unique individual who in my life caused much heart searching, and who also gave much joy and richness. He left us with several conundrums, such as; 'who can be an artist', 'what is it that artists should do', 'who says what is good or bad art' and 'can art be taught?'  He was a reminder that the pattern of humanity is sometimes cut as a difficult fit. 

See also: 

RIP Tony Baker In many ways Tony Baker understood Tony Tomlin and supported him far more than I ever did and they are now joined in that post life world of the dead, I hope they have found each other again and that they have been joined in their companionship with Graham Head; Tony Tomlin's tutor when he was at the Jacob Kramer College and who was a long time advocate of his work and who passed away this time last year.

Blueprints of thought

Vanuatu sand drawing

In her discussion of how to read pre-historic art and the 'abstract' work of contemporary hunter gatherer societies, Esther Pasztory uses the phrase 'blueprints of thought' in order to steer us away from an idea that these are works of aesthetic high value. In her classic text, 'Thinking with things', she is always at pains to get us to think about how images are used to carry ideas and information. 

I do think her approach to understanding visual imagery is an excellent one, because it always forces me to ask myself questions as to how my own work comes to have meaning. For instance when discussing what pre-historic images might mean, she cites the importance of storytelling to several cultures and of how visual imagery is used alongside storytelling to reinforce spoken narratives. 

I have referenced the sand drawings of the Vanuatu islanders before; ephemeral drawings that are made as stories are told. At one point when I was watching a video of a story teller at work I was captivated by the fact that the sand drawer used both hands. A left hand could trace significant moments of one character's story in the sand, and the right hand could be leaving a story/map of another character. Significant changes of direction in a line, would signify fulcrum points related to important action in the story and the drawing would link up its left and right halves at points when the two stories came back together. In this way a dot, or finger pushed hole in the sand, could just as easily represent a water hole where someone drowned, as a place where everyone sat down to eat. These types of drawings use multivalent symbols, that only make sense to the small groups of people who were there at their inception. 

I was reminded of this when I was hosting my workshops on the visualisation of interoception. At the end of each workshop we had lots of animated discussions about what each drawing represented. Each maker had a story and as people had been working in pairs, often their partner would chip in to add an explanation as to what their marks represented. By the end we had often achieved a good level of communication, the drawings acting as supports for the stories told by the participants. But when taken out of context, when I tried to create further images from the drawings, the consensus of understanding began to fall away. My grand idea that there was some sort of universal visual language that could be used to communicate inner feelings, was questionable and perhaps I needed to rethink what I was doing in terms of how conversation and storytelling worked. 

This has led me to re-think how a gallery could work as a space for the reception of visual thinking. Instead of seeing it as a neutral place, where people are given time and space to work out their own understanding of artwork, to position the gallery as a psychic centre, whereby people come together to tell somatic stories and to hear new ones, the work in the space operating as supportive material to give flavour and grounding for thoughts as they arrive. The gallery then becomes an active space for the generation of meaning, rather than a passive space designed for the reception of aesthetic value. 

A workshop participant visualising an interoceptual experience

This new year, is perhaps a time whereby I will be able to integrate a more performative aspect of my practice into and alongside what I am doing already. 

In the meantime I hope that this new year brings health and wellbeing to all the readers of this blog and that during the course of the year my various ramblings begin to make sense to you. 

Reference:

Pasztory, E. (2005) Thinking with Things University of Texas Press

See also:

Drawing it all together

Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the shape of stories

Drawing for site specific proposals 

Interoception: The research objective

The feeling of a lack of circulation in the foot

Over time I have slowly begun to realise that the embodied feelings that I have been trying to visualise are tightly woven into the emotions, thoughts and memories that are swilling around us as chemical seas. Everything seems to co-emerge as part of the raw feeling tone that is a conscious human being. These are the echo soundings of the physiological state of our body. If we are to achieve any sort of homeostasis, that state of balance that maintains our internal material, electrical and chemical conditions and reach an optimal state for the best way for us to function, we need to not only register how anxious or calm we are, but we need to reconcile various thought patterns, feelings and instincts, in such a way that we are in harmony with them. These feelings compose the soil out of which our actions will emerge and we need to maintain some type of harmony or balance, if this soil is to support ongoing healthy actions.

The congested chest 

If we can visualise the raw feeling states that we have but rarely turn our attention to, we can hopefully be able to get closer to an engagement with the complex meanings that emerge out of the embodied experience we have of our world.

The images and texts that I make from conversations with people about their feelings, are all signs of emerging narratives, ones that as they come out into the open, will help everyone to accept the confusion of existence and to come to terms with that feeling of not being quite ready to face reality, or sense of unease as they come to think about the 'what's next' of daily life. The strangeness of the forms that are worked with, is partly to get past the being 'too familiar with things' stage, as the forms often associated with feelings are too clichéd for us to actually respond to them honestly any more. 

A fear of incontinence 

I have just made available on line one of my working notebooks, whereby some of my images of embodied feelings are collected together.  These drawings were were made after having a series of conversations with others about their feelings. I made notes and then went away and developed a series of more 'worked through' images, whereby my own feelings were conjoined with the images I was trying to work with. I have been using this collection of images to help others and myself in the development of visualisations of inner or somatic feelings. The images can also be used to assess whether or not there is any close similarity with how others visualise their own feelings and if there is, perhaps a visual language of feeling representations could at some point be constructed. This is an old idea, but one that perhaps needs to be revisited. One of my aims is to eventually sit my work alongside that of long debunked theorists such as Benjamin Brett, Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc and Walter Russell and perhaps do this with a nod to Jean Perdrizet's speculative engineering. This is not to disprove or prove any particular theory, but to flag up a common need to find an answer to why we experience the world in the way we do. Now I am older, I really think it is time for me to sort out how my own body/mind is wired up and I have turned to counselling to help myself to understand myself. Hopefully as I undertake the 'getting to become more aware of myself ' sessions, I also get to accept that whatever it is I am experiencing is mostly fascinating and wonderful. My present and past prediction mechanisms always seem to churn my stomach up and race my heart because they are set at a default of 'something terrible is going to happen'. This has caused me to often fail before I begin, or just not experience events as they could be, being overly nervous about what others might think or too worried about what might happen to actually let myself feel and experience what is going on around me. I have learnt over the years that if I am to make anything interesting as an artist, I have to embrace the unknown, I have to enjoy the fact that I don't know what will happen and that the more I am able to do this, the better the work will be. I now actually enjoy the process of being able to do this and it's time for this emotionally safe place to be the one whereby I site the rest of myself. 

Inner body, somatic awareness is concerned with sensations like feeling anxious or happy but can also be about feeling pain or its relief; all of these interoceptual experiences are as real as each other and they are entwined together. I have recently had to have a hernia operation, the process made me very aware of my groin and as I meditated on this I made images. Because I was confined to bed for a few days afterwards to allow the wound to heal, I was using my laptop computer to draw on top of and manipulate images that had previously been made using traditional drawing materials such as ink and watercolour. What emerged was a particular form that made use of a much more emotional colour range. Perhaps because I wasn't able to move far I needed to invest my emotional energies in colour thought. This is what emerged. 

A visualisation of sensations post hernia operation

As an observer you may or may not 'get it'. There may not be a shape or form that carries meaning in the way I would want it to, but that still doesn't stop me wanting to communicate that invisible something inside me. Perhaps all my work is simply a desire for others to see what is inside me, to be able to transparently communicate my thoughts to others. It is though in the interaction between others that meaning will emerge, just as it must have grown out of conversations around a fire at night in caves 40,000 years ago, a thought emerges into the open, either through spoken words, that may themselves have emerged from a mouthful of air, or from drawings made with a stick in the dust on the cave floor. 

Bunion pain

I'm sure many of us feel as if we are trapped inside our own mind and yearn to be able to experience and communicate with the world more directly and fully. To explore whether the visualisation of interoceptual experiences will help do this, is my research objective boiled down to its essence. 

That familiar anxiety starts up again

See also:

An annotated workbook designed to help others in the visualisation of interoceotual experiences. 

Breathing: An interoceptual experience

The visualisation of embodied feeling

Freud and drawing invisible forces

Benjamin Brett and Geometrical psychology 

Qualia

Drawing: Analogue and digital processes 

Visualising energy flow

Drawing together science and myth An introduction to the work of Jean Perdrizet

The diagram as art and spirit guide An introduction to the work of Walter Russell

The iconography of the invisible An introduction to the work of Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc

Artists' Christmas Cards

Herbert Bayer

Good luck and best wishes to all those who have been following my various posts during this last year. It has been a hard year to process, what with the continuing war in Ukraine, Gaza, the crisis in Syria, the escalating violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a worsening crisis in Sudan, the tragedy of Afghanistan, famine in Ethiopia and civil war in Yemen. Elections have been held on both sides of the Atlantic and with any change of government comes an associated uncertainty as to what the future will bring. Let us find hope that things will pan out for the best next year. 

Christmas is a festival that celebrates birth. A birth is always uplifting as it offers the expectations associated with new life. It suggests a new beginning, a chance for a new human to become something wonderful. 

Herbert Bayer: 1941

This image of hands by Bayer, is perhaps due a revisit in these troubled times. The fingers are stained with blood and yet also tipped in virginal snow. We are seen by hands that have had a busy year, human kindness has been in short supply, but the point about a mid-winter festival is that spring is coming and under the snow new growth is ready to emerge. Let's hope the white tipped fingers are a sign of coming peace. 

I have chosen another motley bunch of artists this year, each of whom was either persuaded or decided to make an effort and come up with a Christmas card, which shows how the festive season impacts on artists of all sorts, whether they are abstractionists, conceptualists or realists, all wanting to celebrate the yearly ritual of the winter solstice in one way or other. I particularly like the way that Jacques Lipchitz makes a meal of the word 'FROM', the 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' part seems as if it is a bit of an afterthought, as if he started by being asked to write out a label for a present, and then perhaps his wife Berthe Lipchitz, (the Russian poet Berthe Kitrosse) said it wasn't Christmassy enough, so he added an attempt at a tree, which failed, so he just added a jaunty on its side 'Merry'.

Jacques Lipchitz: 1947

Alfonso Assorio is the only artist in this small collection who you feel was actually a practicing Christian, who needed to find an image that carried his feelings about his faith. He had this to say about religion; “Religion must aim to inspire awe, to awe man with the splendour of his existence. By a set of unexpected juxtapositions, it must put you in a state of realisation of how splendid things can be, even if they are horrible.” His card does seem still appropriate for a time of war and strife. 

Alfonso Assorio

Max Weber was Polish Jewish and his 'Best Christmas and a Happy New Year' signing of his woodcut, suggests that he has by now fully assimilated himself into American culture. His image that is designed to channel the visual power of old European folk traditions, softened by a statement that could be found on countless millions of Christmas cards sent out every year. 

Max Weber: 1950

Nathan Gluck was Andy Warhol’s principle studio assistant from the early 1950s through to the mid-1960s, initially working in Warhol’s pre-Pop commercial art studio, he was with him as he evolved into the man who ran the Factory; so he was involved in Warhol's emergence from the world of graphics, into the world of fine art. For myself Gluck is a reminder that the differences between design and fine art are far less important than the similarities. In designing this Christmas card, Gluck is operating like a good graphic designer and a good fine artist. He brings together colour, texture and text in a neat idea. Every snow flake is supposed to be different, changing constantly as it encounters different conditions of humidity and vapour levels as it falls through the atmosphere, no one flake, ever experiencing exactly the same journey. Finger prints are also seen to be symbols of uniqueness.  By printing his finger prints off in white they become in effect falling snow. But putting these white blobs on a red background is the clever moment, as we are visually reminded of the white pom-poms that sit on the apex of a Santa hat. Year 62 opening with a snow fall that suggests a coming year of unique individual creativity, a year that will see Warhol produce both Campbell's Soup and Marilyn images. 

Nathan Gluck: 1962

Saturnalia was the Roman festival that took place around the same time as our current Christmas. The god Saturn taught humans how to sow seeds and harvest crops, and he emphasised the importance of peace to a society founded upon war; an idea that I'm sure the people of Syria would love to see taken up again. Saturn is an old God, in Greek myth he is Kronos, a Titan and father of Zeus. He is also a son of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). Like Christmas, Saturnalia was celebrated by good eating, drinking, gift-giving, and having a good time. The small gifts that were exchanged were done to bring good luck and a bountiful harvest in the coming year, something that depended on the unfolding of the seasons, a process Kronos, as the God of time, was in control of. 
Gaia is of course still with us, central to the idea that the Earth is a self-regulating system of living organisms and the environments that host them; life on Earth being maintained by a complex system of interactions that both create and regulate the conditions that support it. Think of this post as a small gift that I offer to anyone who reads it, and as you hopefully accept this gift, I make a wish for the coming year:

I wish for a growing awareness of our world's fragility 

Of a dawning realisation that peace is a possibility, even in the hearts of those that hate

And that the Earth and all its creatures will survive to face a wonderful future

See also:

2014: Christmas cards

2018: Christmas cards

2019: Christmas cards

2020: Christmas cards

2021: Christmas cards

Life lines

Ostraca

A satirical scene

In ancient Egypt, when the artists who drew out the formal designs for tomb walls or sculptures had to try out ideas or just draw for fun, the most available surfaces to work on were the fragments of stone sliced off the reliefs and statues that were being carved all around them. We can forget sometimes that before carving could commence, drawings were made on the surfaces of the stone as guides for the carvers, but of course as soon as the carving work was underway, the drawings were lost. The people who made those drawings were artists and they would have wanted to make ideas visible far more interesting than the formal figures that they were having to draw for their day job, so I suspect that the satirical scene above, is just the tip of the iceberg of a body of images that have yet to be really explored.
These small, often insignificant drawings were called ostraca, and they were used for a variety of purposes at different times and by different cultures, all of which practiced stone carving as their main means of creating official forms of visual art.
As well as being used like small sketchbooks, sometimes these shards were used in the same way as note pads, places to jot down private thoughts, shopping lists or 'to do' notes.

Ostrakon scratched into a terracotta shard inscribed with 'Kimon [son] of Miltiades'

Shards of broken pottery were also used for the same purpose, (a single shard of pottery is called an ostrakon) and because these shards were so ubiquitous, sometimes they developed a more formal use, for instance in Greece, they were used like voting papers and there was a ceremony that took its name from their use, 'the ostrakismos', during which people could scratch into a shard of pottery, the name of anyone who deserved to be banished. If enough people voted for a particular person, they could be banished for ten years, thus giving rise to the concept we now call ostracism. I'm afraid as this blog is also concerned with embodied meaning, I ought to bring up the fact that broken pottery shards were also used for anal hygiene, whereby a curse was placed on the to be exiled individual by literally soiling their name. This is another example of what I have termed an 'externalised idea', a bringing out of the body, what was an embodied thought and creating an object to contain it. In doing this humans could communicate with other humans thoughts that originated invisibly inside them.

From the time of the Roman Empire, ostraka have been found that were used to document the activities of the Roman army, so they were also used as a recording device. 

I was fascinated by these things because I have always found notebooks and sketchbooks to be a vital part of my own practice, whether they are for working out ideas, documenting what I have seen, recording a thought or just jotting down a 'to do' list.

Limestone ostracon depicting a cat, a boy, and a mouse magistrate

Egyptian ostracon: Walters Art Museum

I think the stubble beard is a sign of mourning, and the hands are obviously try outs. There is something wonderful to be taken from the idea of a pharaoh needing a shave, it brings the god like figure right down to earth. These drawn on shards reminding us that all those marvellous structures of ancient times, were the product of people, who had everyday lives like us all. 

They enjoyed sex.

And the children the sex created were also allowed to draw on the same fragments of stone.

Children's ostracon drawings: Athribis, Egypt

Once you have children you need to tell them stories and it looks as if the ostracon below might have been an early attempt to illustrate one of those stories.

A cat herding geese

I was reminded that in my own sketchbooks I used to illustrate stories and songs for the children, such as the 'Frog he would a wooing go'.

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh-huh

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh-huh

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow

She tried to dance but she didn't know how, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee

Said, "Please Miss Mousey, will you marry me ?" uh-huh

Things change but they stay the same.

See also:

Sketchbooks

Frances Alys uses a sketchbook: More on an artist and play

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is the verbal or written representation of a visual representation. It is often used as a way to stage an encounter between mediums, a sort of test bed whereby you can gage either the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of its communicative ability, or to judge the poetry of the experience. Therefore in terms of writing, ekphrasis is often thought of as a poetic form, but it doesn't have to be and there was much, I think I remember, written about the difference in approach to ekphasis between Greek and Roman writers. The Greeks insisting that recited poetry was the pure form and that prose was a more debased form of writing. True ekphrasis therefore being a verbal representation of a visual representation.

The use of ekphrasis as a rhetorical device is usually traced back to Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. Homer uses a long description of the shield and its making as a sort of interlude in the poem, a space in a fast paced narrative, whereby the everyday scenes that make up the decoration of the shield, give us a vision of the ordinary lives of non-heroic Greeks. (Ordinary in those days still including lots of gore and fighting) This interlude gives us the necessary mental space to contemplate the coming horror of superhuman action and emotions. Achilles has heard that Patrocolus his old friend from boyhood is dead, not just that but he died pretending to be Achilles, as he thought by doing this he could galvanise the troops to follow him in a Greek victory; as Achilles had at the time refused to fight. The armour Achilles had lent him now stripped from the body by Hector, and because of this Achilles now falls into an intense rage striding out in front of the battlefield with flames burning from his head, terrifying the Trojans as he screams both for vengeance and the stupidity of his own actions.

Perhaps time to set up that encounter between mediums. Achilles' mother the sea goddess Thetis, goes to the God Hephaestus and pleads for him to make new armour to replace that taken from the body of Patrocolus by Hector. Hephaestus agrees to make the armour and as he does Homer develops a vivid description of the shield as it emerges from his workshop forging. This is the passage in full:

First fashioned he a shield, great and sturdy, adorning it cunningly in every part, and round about it set a bright rim, threefold and glittering, and therefrom made fast a silver baldric. Five were the layers of the shield itself; and on it he wrought many curious devices with cunning skill. Therein he wrought the earth, therein the heavens therein the sea, and the unwearied sun, and the moon at the full, and therein all the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned—the Pleiades, and the Hyades and the mighty Orion, and the Bear, that men call also the Wain, that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean. Therein fashioned he also two cities of mortal men exceeding fair. In the one there were marriages and feastings, and by the light of the blazing torches they were leading the brides from their bowers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. And young men were whirling in the dance, and in their midst flutes and lyres sounded continually; and there the women stood each before her door and marvelled. But the folk were gathered in the place of assembly; for there a strife had arisen, and two men were striving about the blood-price of a man slain; the one avowed that he had paid all, declaring his cause to the people, but the other refused to accept aught; and each was fain to win the issue on the word of a daysman. Moreover, the folk were cheering both, shewing favour to this side and to that. And heralds held back the folk, and the elders were sitting upon polished stones in the sacred circle, holding in their hands the staves of the loud-voiced heralds. Therewith then would they spring up and give judgment, each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold, to be given to him whoso among them should utter the most righteous judgment. But around the other city lay in leaguer two hosts of warriors gleaming in armour. And twofold plans found favour with them, either to lay waste the town or to divide in portions twain all the substance that the lovely city contained within. Howbeit the besieged would nowise hearken thereto, but were arming to meet the foe in an ambush. The wall were their dear wives and little children guarding,  as they stood thereon, and therewithal the men that were holden of old age; but the rest were faring forth, led of Ares and Pallas Athene, both fashioned in gold, and of gold was the raiment wherewith they were clad. Goodly were they and tall in their harness, as beseemeth gods, clear to view amid the rest, and the folk at their feet were smaller. But when they were come to the place where it seemed good unto them to set their ambush, in a river-bed where was a watering-place for all herds alike, there they sate them down, clothed about with flaming bronze. Thereafter were two scouts set by them apart from the host, waiting till they should have sight of the sheep and sleek cattle. And these came presently, and two herdsmen followed with them playing upon pipes; and of the guile wist they not at all. But the liers-in-wait, when they saw these coming on, rushed forth against them and speedily cut off the herds of cattle and fair flocks of white-fleeced sheep, and slew the herdsmen withal. But the besiegers, as they sat before the places of gathering and heard much tumult among the kine, mounted forthwith behind their high-stepping horses, and set out thitherward, and speedily came upon them. Then set they their battle in array and fought beside the river banks, and were ever smiting one another with bronze-tipped spears. And amid them Strife and Tumult joined in the fray, and deadly Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the mellay by the feet; and the raiment that she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Even as living mortals joined they in the fray and fought; and they were haling away each the bodies of the others' slain. Therein he set also soft fallow-land, rich tilth and wide, that was three times ploughed; and ploughers full many therein were wheeling their yokes and driving them this way and that. And whensoever after turning they came to the headland of the field, then would a man come forth to each and give into his hands a cup of honey-sweet wine; and the ploughmen would turn them in the furrows, eager to reach the headland of the deep tilth. And the field grew black behind and seemed verily as it had been ploughed, for all that it was of gold; herein was the great marvel of the work. Therein he set also a king's demesne-land, wherein labourers were reaping, bearing sharp sickles in their hands. Some handfuls were falling in rows to the ground along the swathe, while others the binders of sheaves were binding with twisted ropes of straw. Three binders stood hard by them, while behind them boys would gather the handfuls, and bearing them in their arms would busily give them to the binders; and among them the king, staff in hand, was standing in silence at the swathe, joying in his heart. And heralds apart beneath an oak were making ready a feast, and were dressing a great ox they had slain for sacrifice; and the women sprinkled the flesh with white barley in abundance, for the workers' mid-day meal. Therein he set also a vineyard heavily laden with clusters, a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles. And around it he drave a trench of cyanus, and about that a fence of tin; and one single path led thereto, whereby the vintagers went and came, whensoever they gathered the vintage. And maidens and youths in childish glee were bearing the honey-sweet fruit in wicker baskets. And in their midst a boy made pleasant music with a clear-toned lyre, and thereto sang sweetly the Linos-song with his delicate voice; and his fellows beating the earth in unison therewith followed on with bounding feet mid dance and shoutings. And therein he wrought a herd of straight-horned kine: the kine were fashioned of gold and tin, and with lowing hasted they forth from byre to pasture beside the sounding river, beside the waving reed. And golden were the herdsmen that walked beside the kine, four in number, and nine dogs swift of foot followed after them. But two dread lions amid the foremost kine were holding a loud-lowing bull, and he, bellowing mightily, was haled of them, while after him pursued the dogs and young men. The lions twain had rent the hide of the great bull, and were devouring the inward parts and the black blood, while the herdsmen vainly sought to fright them, tarring on the swift hounds. Howbeit these shrank from fastening on the lions, but stood hard by and barked and sprang aside. Therein also the famed god of the two strong arms wrought a pasture in a fair dell, a great pasture of white-fleeced sheep, and folds, and roofed huts, and pens. Therein furthermore the famed god of the two strong arms cunningly wrought a dancing-floor like unto that which in wide Cnosus Daedalus fashioned of old for fair-tressed Ariadne. There were youths dancing and maidens of the price of many cattle, holding their hands upon the wrists one of the other. Of these the maidens were clad in fine linen, while the youths wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the maidens had fair chaplets, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. Now would they run round with cunning feet exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitteth by his wheel that is fitted between his hands and maketh trial of it whether it will run; and now again would they run in rows toward each other. And a great company stood around the lovely dance, taking joy therein; and two tumblers whirled up and down through the midst of them as leaders in the dance. Therein he set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield. 

The Iliad Book 18, lines 478–608

Ekphrasis allows Homer two layers of communication, the first and most important via the scenes as they are laid out around the shield, which are set out rather like the script for a graphic novel and secondly those references to the metalwork that has been worked on in the forge of Hephaestus, whereby Homer points to the selective use of tin, gold, silver etc. thus materially reenforcing the narrative. 

I have thought myself that the structure of the shield might have been based on one of the forms of memory recall devices that were used before the development of writing as an everyday recording device. Memory palaces or theatres as they have been called, all of which are basically structures you can mentally walk through and as you did you could retrieve parts of a long complicated narrative that you needed to remember. (All described in detail in Frances Yates: The Art of Memory). 

One way of visually organising the shield

The text feels quite long, but it was originally meant to be spoken, or recited, a particular 'poetic' voice would have intoned this epic poem and as it is such a long piece, I suspect specialists would have developed all sorts of 'tricks of the trade' to ensure they both remembered what they had to declaim and that they had the necessary voice control to ensure a proper emphasis was placed on the different emotional encounters we are taken into.

The translation of this passage into a visual object is another fascinating aspect of the ekphrasis encounter.

Alexander Pope
Diagram for Achilles’ Shield 

The poet Alexander Pope decided to rewrite the Iliad for an 18th century audience and as part of his research he decided to make a diagram of the shield, one not unlike the diagram already used. What is interesting here is that a visual methodology, the diagram, is being used by a wordsmith, the poet in order to come to a better understanding of another poet's words.

The Victorians were fascinated by Classical Greek culture and as they prided themselves that their own culture had great craftsmen too, copies of what was an imaginary object were commissioned.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the London-based royal goldsmiths and jewellers, used 24 drawings and 5 models drawn up and made by John Flaxman over a period of approximately seven years, to create a copy of the shield. He received a first payment of 100 guineas 'for the beautiful design of the shield of Achilles' and a further payment of £200 for the designs on 4 January 1817 and a payment of £525 for the models on 20 January 1818. (Approximately £80,000 in today's money) The final model probably made in wax or clay, was then cast in plaster, and the finer details carved into it. Three bronze casts were made, followed by five cast in silver, one of which was bought by George IV in early 1821 and which remains in the Royal Collection.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell: The Shield of Achilles

John Flaxman: War: Design for the shield of Achilles

1832 illustration: Unknown artist

Angelo Monticelli (1778 – 1837)

As well as Flaxman's designs and Rundell, Bridge and Rundell's recreation, several artists were commissioned to make illustrations based on Homer's text. What is fascinating is that eventually the shield settles down into a visual idea, one fashioned by drawing, rather than making, which is interesting, especially that I haven't seen any references to recreations trying to make for example; "a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles"; a series of visual effects that were made, I presume, in Homer's imagination, by welding and / or embedding different materials together.

So what was made initially "out of a mouthful of air", as the poet Yates would put it, was eventually written down in Greek, translated into English via Latin and French versions and this one particular imaginary object, was then reverse engineered via its visualisation through drawing, to be eventually reconstructed as an actual metal shield.

As to the encounter between mediums, and being able to gage the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of communicative ability, I think the issue is that the idea was first and foremost poetic, and the natural medium for the description was a verbal one. As we read the text, we get a glimpse of what it would have been like to hear it recited, and when we see the reconstruction, we begin to realise no matter how well the words are used as a pattern from which to create an actual artefact, the complexity of Homer's original thinking is over simplified and what we are left with is a shallow version of a God's design, which could never be copied by mere mortals, because it was an idea and never a reality. 

See also:

Drawing with words

Drawing as writing

Drawing as translation

Translation: Drawing between languages