Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Margaret Atwood's blue line

There is a collection of Margaret Atwood's short stories called 'Murder in the Dark' published in 1994 by Virago. One of her stories, entitled 'Autobiography', was I felt a wonderful evocation of what happens when you make a drawing. You begin with a line, in this case a blue one and this very quickly becomes the things that imagination breeds as the line moves on and the image gets more complex. But as Atwood's is a very short narrative, indeed a micro story; perhaps it's easier and much better to simply present it as I first read it.

Autobiography by Margaret Atwood

'The first thing I can remember is a blue line. This was on the left, where the lake disappeared into the sky. At that point there was a white sand cliff, although you couldn't see it from where I was standing. On the right the lake narrowed into a river and there was a dam and a covered bridge, some houses and a white church. In front there was a small rock island with a few trees on it. Along the shore there were large boulders and the sawed-off trunks of huge trees coming up through the water. Behind is a house, a path running back into the forest, the entrance to another path which cannot be seen from where I was standing but was there anyway. At one point this path was wider; oats fallen from the nosebags of logger's horses during some distant winter had sprouted and grown. Hawks nested there. Once, on the rock island, there was the half-eaten carcass of a deer, which smelled like iron, like rust rubbed into your hands so that it mixes with sweat. This smell is the point at which the landscape dissolves, ceases to be a landscape and becomes something else.'

In a few sentences Atwood shows how things grow out of the mind; in her case writing moves along and as it does it creates a world. Then at some point the imaginative unfolding will stop and as an artist you are once again reminded of the reality of what you are doing. As this happens the imaginative world disappears and you are confronted by marks on paper or a memory of the reality that lay behind the fantasy, in either case you step away from what you have created and see it as the fiction it is.

Taking a blue line for a walk

I have been making imaginative visualisations of the body's interior landscapes, often beginning by taking a felt-tip pen for a walk and just seeing what it will reveal to me. In the drawing above I was fascinated to see that what had emerged was an image that might have been designed as an illustration of the interior of an early mythic human. In his text 'the Symposium', Plato has Aristophanes narrate the history of what he terms the 'Soulmates', the first humans.

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.” Symposium, Plato

The interior landscape of these people might well have been a space where ribs and kidneys and other organs were doubled.

This is Plato's text in full.

“... the primeval human was round, back and sides forming a circle; with four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Humans could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as they pleased, and they could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on their four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when they wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-and the human was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which humans offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained." The answer was of course for Zeus to split them into two separate parts, which is why we spend so much of our lives searching for that 'other half' in order to feel whole again.

I'm sure Plato's thoughts, just like Margaret Atwood's were arrived at, as Yates put it, 'out of a mouthful of air', the narrative shaping itself as it came into being. As usual I didn't know what I was going to write for this post, just as I never know what a drawing is going to become and that is what makes me keep going; every day I find something new emerging and as it does it can often be a thing of wonder.

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Venice Biennale 2024: Part four

There was a large section of the biennale devoted to the portrait, and of all the various approaches the one that made most sense to me was the work of Dalton Paula. His Full-Body Portraits (2023-24) were from a series of sixteen paintings of historical figures of African descent who led, or were involved in, anti-slavery resistance movements in Brazil. It was however the way that he treated the painting of these images that impressed me. He had laid white grounds down for each painting and had left gaps in the paint where the white showed through as cracks or fissures in the image. A stylistic device that suggested that the gaps were metaphors for images of people whose very appearance was constructed upon a white western model. Each of the figures is dressed in western style, standing or sitting in some sort of relationship with western articles of furniture. They inhabit a western world that totally dominates the Brazilian society that these people existed in.

Dalton Paula: Sketchbook study

Dalton Paula

The work of Xiyadie, a father, farmer, gay man, migrant worker and artist, reminded me that the term 'artist' tends to single us out and that we are also fathers, mothers, factory workers, worried old men, happy young women, gardeners, walkers, mountain climbers, politicians, refuse collectors, cleaners and botanists. He cuts paper into visual narratives of his life, images that have documented his life as a queer man in China. For instance 'Sewn' (1999), describes his difficulty in accepting his sexuality while trapped in a heterosexual marriage. Pain and the helplessness of being trapped in a domestic setting are suggested by a huge needle piercing the roof of his house, while a large snake slithering inside him represents his desire. His images are allegories, but because they are made, by cutting out thin white paper and mounting it on black, then highlighting areas in a very limited palette, they seem very fragile, as if the life depicted could at any time fall apart.

Xiyadie: 'Sewn' 1999

Xiyadia: Detail

Xiyadia: Gate

Yuko Mohri wasthe artist representing Japan this year. Her work done by inserting wires into decaying fruit, 'Decomposition', was a demonstration of how you could generate sounds and light from a very natural process. When you insert wires into the fruit you in effect re-create the fruit as a battery. The juice in a lemon, acts as an electrolyte, while the wires act as the battery's terminals. When the wires are inserted into the fruit, chemical reactions occur that create an electric current. The fruits’ internal state is shifting constantly as it decays, which in turn is modulating the pitch of a sound or the intensity of a light. At the same time the fruit is emitting a sweet smell of decay, and its exterior is looking more and more withered or going brown. The fruit was presented on items of furniture that felt as if they had been found in a second hand shop, and old cabinets had been reconfigured to take lights or to now become speakers.

Yuko Mohri

My thoughts about art working as a battery and the idea of it working as a form of energy transmission were immediately triggered and I began rethinking some of my ideas related to sculptures using electrolysis. I had already done several drawings related to sculptures that also worked as electrolysis tanks, using metal coating from copper terminals via dilute aqueous solutions of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid. LEDs are so sensitive now that they only need a tiny amount of electricity to make them glow. I really do need to get back to some of my ideas and re-develop them, which is one of the reasons you go to these exhibitions, there is always going to be something that sparks off either a new idea or gets to to return to old ones refreshed.

In particular an artist from South America really did enthuse me to get back to my large complex drawing ideas. I have sort of avoided finishing some of these, not wanting to put in the effort, as it does involve a lot of concentration and physical control to cover large areas of paper. This is not just about sustained drawing invention but I also have to have enough formal control to enable some sort of visual coherence to be constructed. This has often in the past meant lots of adjustment and removal of initial invention, so that the various elements can fit together as a whole.

Santiago Yahuarcani is of the Aimeni clan of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia, which is at present thought of as part of Peru. His images collect together the memories told by his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the continuing existence of nature spirits and Uitoto creation myths. For Yahuarcani both the landscape and its inhabitants are conscious, because he believes in an animist view of the world. The work is in effect a conversation with the artist and his surroundings, a conversation that is facilitated by the artist's mind inhabiting the plants, trees, and animals of the Amazon, as well as conjoining with creatures from spiritual worlds and other powers that emanate from the landscape he lives in.

Santiago Yahuarcani: Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper: 2022

Santiago Yahuarcani, Shiminbro, el Hacedor del sonido (2024

I went back to the Arsenale to look at Santiago Yahuarcani's work twice and if I had been in Venice for longer would have done so again and again. Each time I could see more visual ideas and the way he fitted it all together was terrific and so exciting. He had also used some ideas that I had come up with myself, such as fish slippers and he had no worries about using multiple and various scales in the same image. I of course looked him up on line and realised like myself he also made images about particular isolated narrative aspects of the mythos he was working with, such as his 'Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper', which again I emphasised with.

Santiago Yahuarcani: Details

The work of Santiago Yahuarcani re-energised me and reminded me that you can make work that is full of complicated detail and yet it can also be funny, exciting, inventive and in Yahuarcani's case colourful. Above all, looking back on the images I took when there, I'm very aware that instead of reflecting on the exhibitions visited this year, I ought to get on with my own work. I have a stained glass window to finish and have already returned to making large drawings that fit together to create a complex narrative about my own world and how strange that is.

Fish slippers

Saturday, 17 August 2024

Venice Biennale 2024 Part three

As an artist that works between 2D and 3D, I'm always fascinated by those that have managed to develop processes that allow them to do this seamlessly. In the USA pavilion Jeffrey Gibson, in his exhibition, 'The space in which to place me', demonstrated how a strong sense of formal design could be used to hold together wide ranges of materials as well as very strong colour combinations. His North American Indian heritage is mined for these formal principles, therefore both signalling his heritage and pointing to the fact that many cultures have in the past relied on abstraction and geometry as frameworks on which they have developed very specific cultural identities; Modernism was not the 'owner' or inventor of abstraction.

Embroidered inserts were locked into compositions that used a symmetry derived from the art of the indigenous people

Navaho carpet designs

Jeffrey Gibson has developed a hybrid visual language that draws from American pop art, minimalism, the art of indigenous people and which also references particular subcultures that he taps into. He is a Choctaw Indian of Cherokee descent, and has lived in urban centres of the United States, Germany, and Korea. In his work, intertribal aesthetics, beadwork, textiles, and found objects from the past two centuries commingle with the visual languages of global modernism. His use of pattern and abstract geometries is a form of cultural critique, that engages with these complex histories rather than erasing them. Gibson develops a space in which Indigenous art, together with a broad spectrum of other cultural expressions and identities are shown to be central to the American experience.

I was particularly taken with these thread and beadwork portrait busts. They had a powerful presence, and the use of a simple symmetry, helped to give formal coherence to the masses of small coloured beads and other items that were used to construct them. The embedded badge states, "If we settle for what they're giving us we deserve what we get". A reminder that so many indigenous people lost their lands and had their ways of making a living taken away, and therefore had to rely on state handouts to survive. They were then labeled as work shy by the very culture that had stolen their livelihoods.

I wasn't as convinced by the heavily textured 'ducks' but liked the fact that they were an attempt to make animal forms with a similar conviction to the human ones.

When you make a ceramic pot or vessel, it is a 3D realisation of your own body's dexterity, a frozen form that captures the movements of its making. Therefore pots have often been used as substitutes for human heads or bodies. Ceramics is of course one of the oldest art forms, and by using pottery within his sculptures, Gibson reminds us again that there are other powerful visual traditions, that can still have relevance, including his own Cherokee culture.

Cherokee artist Davy Arch, "Gumby Pot", 2005

Ceramic and textiles

Large freestanding figures using structures taken from indigenous peoples' tribal costumes

I wasn't sure Gibson had achieved a proper synthesis in these figures, but I could see the intention. Sometimes you just want to do too much; for instance the glaze of the pot/head was bright, but not quite right in terms of overall design. I didn't think the dripped glaze was right and there is such a long history of Cherokee pottery, that I'm sure some of the forms developed historically would have fitted much better.

I was still thinking about how interesting peoples costumes could be as we moved on to the Nordic pavilion. This was devoted to the Altersea Opera, written as a hymn to diversity, displacement and belonging and the costumes that had been designed for the performers had all been based on Japanese kimonos and had been decorated with scenes meant to illustrate various narratives developed within the opera.

The project was conceived and conceptualised by artist Lap-See Lam (Sweden) and realised in collaboration with experimental composer Tze Yeung Ho (Norway) and textile artist Kholod Hawash (Finland). At the centre of the story, lies the Cantonese mythological figure Lo Ting, (half fish, half man) and his longing to return to his former life in Fragrant Harbour; a narrative that is meant to suggest many of the stories told by migrant peoples, of their forced displacement and their thoughts of 'home'. Perhaps because of the fact I was already thinking about the power of clothing as symbolic form, my attention was mainly focused on Kholod Hawash’s textiles that took the form of a sculptural installation using kimonos stretched over bamboo frames. The Altersea Opera merges both real and imaginary stories all related to the diasporic experience, and it leaves us with a recognition of the need to move on and at some point leave behind but not forget previous experiences.

Kholod Hawash: embroidered kimonos

However I also felt that the operatic form was too steeped in western history and its overblown structures made it hard to express genuine emotional engagement with the story; or at least it prevented me from getting this. I wanted something more simple and direct.

Daniel Otero Torres

Because of the nature of the biennale theme there were many reminders of the dangers faced by migrants, such as Daniel Otero Torres's presentation of a simple terracotta relief of a raft with people's belongings on it; a very unobtrusive piece that could easily be overlooked. I think it may have emerged from a community project he was working on, so it may not even have been made by him, but even so, a small image picked out in clay, sometimes can mean more to me than a full opera.

A full sized cart carrying carved wooden eels reflected how memories of home can morph and grow, becoming something strange within whatever stage becomes the new normal.

Brett Graham, Wastelands

Brett Graham uses a distinct Māori visual language to construct a contemporary narrative. Graham’s sculpture Wastelands (2024) is a carved pātaka (storehouse) on wheels, implying mobility, transience, and separation from homeland. The pātaka was traditionally used by the Māori as a storehouse for food and treasures, often bearing particularly ornate carving across the lintel, indicative of the wealth and prestige of the community. Instead of using traditional carved patterns, Graham covers his pātaka in carved forms representing eels, a traditional Māori food source. In 1858, as part of the colonial project, the New Zealand government passed the Waste Lands Act, which shifted the designation of the large swamp lands within which the Māori used to catch eels to “waste”. The act transferred the understanding of swamps as they were now thought of as unoccupiable land, so they could be drained and turned towards western agriculture. Graham reminds us that for the Māori eels were once as valuable as gold and that you don't have to be a migrant to be displaced from your own land.

But probably the most poignant work for myself was that of Bouchra Khalili, who in 'The Mapping Journey Project' (2008–11) used a simple format of videoing a hand holding a marker pen as it followed the narrative of various people who had left their homes and had since been travelling the world looking for another one.

Bouchra Khalili 'The Mapping Journey Project' (2008–11)

To view this work you sat on a seat directly in front of each projection, so that you could listen to a migration the story being told by the person who had experienced it, whilst at the same time watching a pen mark a map. The people recorded were very matter of fact about their experiences. "I saved up money so that I could get someone to help me get away from where I was. They took me to .... and then they disappeared with my papers. Then after working for two years in... I was able to get some false papers made and used them to go to...The police there realised my papers were false and I was deported to...." etc. etc. All were stories to break your heart and yet they were told as if these were recountings of everyday experiences; which I suppose they were for the people involved.

I have tried as an artist to reflect on similar experiences myself, making work that attempted to visualise the stories told to me by migrants who had arrived in Leeds. The work I made at the time made me very aware that I was just one of countless artists all over the world who had been trying to make some sort of sense of an ongoing situation that art cant change. But perhaps by transforming experiences into an art form, we can make sure that the situation isn't forgotten. For myself the work was a realisation that every single person that has had to face leaving their homeland and travelling into the unknown, has had to face a trauma that those of us like myself who live settled lives in stable countries, have so far never had to experience. Hopefully this means that I will have more empathy with those people who after such traumatic journeys, finally end up in the vicinity of Leeds and try to help them with the process of settling in. Our recent experiences when trying to support someone threatened with deportation to the Gambia, have been a reminder that Kafka was indeed prescient as to the role of bureaucracy and the due process of law, when situations such as people's rights to stay in a country arise. This is undoubtedly so that people don't have to deal with people. It's so much easier to let systems make decisions as to people's fates, rather than to look across the room at someone and make a decision as to their future, then and there in front of them. Suddenly people become real and as they do, moral anxiety kicks in, because you know what is going to happen will affect real people in real ways.

Monday, 12 August 2024

Venice Biennale 2024: Part two

My last post on the Venice Biennale ended with a reflection on presentation and possibly the most immediately arresting formal approach to this never ending issue was seen in the Romanian pavilion.

Șerban Savu: The Polyptych of Work and Leisure.

The wall had been extended in thickness, so that all his paintings could be inserted into shallow niches, making them sit flat, with their painted surfaces congruent with the grey painted plaster wall. 45 paintings of various sizes made between 2006 and 2024, were set out in a format that echoed those used in Christian churches and cathedrals. Indeed sometimes the images directly evoked that situation, as in the painting directly above, entitled 'Saint Christopher'. Serban Savu belongs to the Cluj school of Romanian artists, who focus on depicting the banality and uncertainty of life after the fall of Communism and whose work is characterised by a loose application of paint, often with dark, subdued palettes. This subdued tonal range reminded me of the Renaissance use of 'unione' techniques, by which you achieve emotional delicacy by tonal control. One way that controlled colour gradation can be achieved is by toning down colours by reducing their saturation, a method often used by Raphael.

Raphael: Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Raphael used this to achieve a certain monumentality of affect, suggesting that the Christian idea was a solid permanent thing and Savu by also restricting his palette suggests that work is somehow eternal. However as you get closer you become aware of the more impressionist application of paint and this begins to undermine the first impression. You then become more aware of the fact that Savu's paintings are populated by disorientated protagonists and lethargic extras, caught in the lull between work and rest and as you begin to grasp this, you realise his world is one where people are just as confused as we all are. The embedding of the canvases into the huge wall (2215 x 566 cm) and the formal layout, did though really impress me and it reminded me to spend more thought on presentation issues the next time I come to show work.

I have been aware of Madge Gill's work for many years, her drawings have a hallucinatory quality, checkerboard patterns tie her images of women into shallow spaces that suggest giddy, quasi-architectural constructions. Pale faces of nameless women, with ambiguous expressions people her images, crowds of them swirl about and push their way through a compositional thicket, which is in reality the organic shape of an energetic pen and ink drawing. When asked about her drawings she stated that she was working under the control of 'Myrninerest', her spirit guide, and that her drawings were some sort of magical outpouring similar to ghost writing.

Madge Gill

Gill's mediumistic communications from another world, proliferate in a dense web of repetitive mark making and the immense scale of the work presented at Venice, 'Crucifixion of the Soul' from 1936, is a monumental version of her characteristic approach. It reminded me of a stained glass window both in its luminous intricacy and the way it was made; she developed the composition by drawing on sections of her calico fabric as it was unrolled. I have not made any large drawings for a while, trying to focus on developing a wider range of imagery and looking for ways to open out the subject matter for my ceramic work, but this image reminded me that I need to finish the stained glass panel I have been working on and more importantly, that I have now developed sketchbooks full of imagery that needs to be activated by being brought together within both remembered and mythic landscapes as narratives. Some of my best work, (or what I regard as my most effective), has been done when I have set myself the task of creating large scale drawings that can hold within them complex narratives. They do though take a lot of mental as well as physical effort, but without that, the work can stay on a sort of 'OK' or satisfactory level, so I really do need to get back to making more ambitious images.

Outsider art, or art made outside of western art traditions, was central to this biennale's idea of 'Foreigners Everywhere'. Anna Zemánková’s images of invented plants and alien like organisms were another approach to what I think of as finding an internal affinity with an external reality. In her own words, she was “growing flowers that are not grown anywhere else”. The exhibition catalogue states that her 'forms seem to metastasise with a vital force of their own, laden with fruit-like appendages and delicate arabesques. The imagery of the pieces on display straddle both microcosmic and macroscopic orders, evoking a cartography of unknown astronomical formations as well as the reproductive structures of imagined plant life.' I couldn't put it better.

Anna Zemánková

Artists such as Madge Gill and Anna Zemánková who are considered as outsiders within a rationally focused western culture, can be seen, because of their mediumistic type communications, as being very similar to artists who in other cultures tap into the spiritual world, as a way to interpret the day to day realities of existence. Joseca Mokahesi, a Brazilian artist who lives in the Yanomami Indigenous lands. draws characters, scenes, and landscapes from his people’s universe, presenting myths and shamanistic chants, as well as moments from the everyday. Many of his characters are 'xapiri', spirits left by Omama, the Yanomami creation deity, to aid shamans in their tasks, who when summoned, descend and manifest in shamans’ bodies. The image directly below is of the spirit 'Hawahiri', drawn as a chestnut tree emerging from a mouth.

Joseca Mokahesi: A bee spirit

I could really empathise with this approach and have for a while been thinking that an animist way of thinking is essential to a reconciliation with a world that we have tended to mine for its resources, rather than find ways to communicate and commingle with it. Thinking about communication with things very different to ourselves might also mean that we need to see things differently and an artist/shaman such as Joseca Mokahesi, might help show us a way to do this.

Next to the space devoted to Joseca Mokahesi's images, was another Yanomami artist. André Taniki is a shaman who's artistic output is directly linked to his association with artist and photographer Claudia Andujar and anthropologist Bruce Albert. The drawings exhibited by Taniki were done in the late 1970s, and were made in conversation with Bruce Albert, when together they were searching for ways to depict shamanic visions. The structures of the drawings made represent the organisation of the cosmos from the point of view of the Yanomamis’ sense-universe. They are a sort of cartography which is visible only to the 'xapiri', the Yanomami shaman’s auxiliary spirits, and to the shamans themselves. The drawings, made using felt tip pens provided by Bruce Albert, made me think about the possibilities of translation and communication between different cultures and systems of knowledge.

André Taniki

This work also made me think about cultural tourism and what might be happening to these people once they had been exposed to the western art world. Nothing seems straightforward any more, but I hope both Joseca Mokahesi and André Taniki found something of benefit by taking the time to put their shamanic visions on paper and using them to explain to others some aspects of the nature of their lives.

Naminapu Maymuru-White: paintings on bark

Naminapu Maymuru-White, presented a series of bark paintings that show animal and celestial motifs, and which were based on centuries-old stories. These images are meant to invoke old wisdom, connecting the earthly sphere with heaven and linking ancestors to people living now. The paintings are of the Milŋiyawuy an indigenous name for the Milky Way. It is also the name of a river that flows into the north of Blue Mud Bay, where Maymuru-White lives, and the paintings are also about the river. Their restricted palette gave these images a certain gravitas, and the themes of landscapes, stars and other elemental forms, still seemed to ring true, even if these images had been lifted out of the Australian territories that they were meant to be set within. I do understand that many of these indigenous artists have been locked into a western art world structure and that they have begun to rely on money coming from purchases made from outside their community, but even so, it seemed to me that some of the old magic of landscape embedded storylines was still there; these images were effecting me deeply enough to want to have one of them on my own walls at home.

Archie Moore 'Kith and kin'

The First Nations people of Australia have a considerable presence in this biennale, the Australia Pavilion itself showcasing a powerful piece made by the artist Archie Moore, who’s kith and kin is both evidence and a reminder of how these first inhabitants of the continent have been treated since the British occupation.A huge chalk on blackboard mural traces Archie Moore's Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations back 65,000+ years, therefore including the common ancestors of all humans. Handwritten across the walls and ceiling, this huge family tree engulfs the audience. As the catalogue states, the central black ink made pool 'works like a void; a memorial to First Nations deaths in state custody attended by piles of coroners’ reports. Archie adds archival records referencing kin to demonstrate how colonial laws and government policies have long been imposed upon First Nations peoples. These bureaucratic papers documenting tragedies are cradled by the reflection of the family tree in the surrounding water. The artist uses his family history to make systemic issues uncomfortably tangible to audiences while providing a prescient reminder that we are all kin.'

Archie Moore 'Kith and kin'

The video gives a much better idea of how immersive Archie Moore's work was.

I began to wonder if things had actually changed at all. Primitivism as an aesthetic was often used by Europeans borrowing from non-Western cultures. The Art historian Kobena Mercer when writing about Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon in his book on black diasporic art, 'Travel and See', argued that Picasso's stylistic change in response to an African inspired aesthetic was individualistic and modern, but the artists he took ideas from received little to no recognition for their work. Picasso himself said about his painting "It's not an aesthetic process; it's a form of magic that interposes itself between us and the hostile universe, a means of seizing power by imposing a form on our terrors as well as on our desires." I think he intuitively as an artist recognised the magical intent of the work he was responding to, the issue being that the culture these works emerged from had no concept of the celebrated individual artist, the work emerging from a common cultural language of magical effect that many artists had used over long periods of time. If we can get beyond the idea of Picasso as a genius and simply see his work as a celebration of the human spirit, then we might be able to accept his appropriations as an acknowledgement of the inventive power of all human beings.

I'm still very much in awe of Picasso, he has taught me so much over the years and I still return to his work as a very deep reservoir of both formal invention and simple joyful, playful fun. So I will give him the final words for today's post. On entering the museum he found it damp and dusty and nearly left, but he didn't. He stated, "But I forced myself to stay, to examine these masks, all these objects that people had created with a sacred, magical purpose, to serve as intermediaries between them and the unknown, hostile forces surrounding them, attempting in that way to overcome their fears by giving them colour and form. And then I understood what painting really meant. It's not an aesthetic process; it's a form of magic that interposes itself between us and the hostile universe, a means of seizing power by imposing a form on our terrors as well as on our desires. The day I understood that, I had found my path."

To be able to look at the work of artists from other cultures and see within that art something to inspire and change yourself, demonstrates great insight and empathy, qualities that many people have decided are not ones with which to associate Picasso. Like many Spanish men of his time he believed in the myth of the bull male, something that now seems totally unacceptable, but I don't believe he can be blamed for something his entire generation accepted as being the way things were.