BeckyBendyLegs

Slow TV – more entertaining than Big Brother

Posted on 29 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

Today I read about the people of Norway’s love of ‘slow TV’. This refers to the showing on mainstream television of actual events at real time speed. Apparently, this concept has existed in Norway for many years, and is soon to be exported to the US. This made my art antennae prick up since I would describe myself as an artist of the ‘ordinary’ and I’ve recently branched out into using video to depict the ordinary.

I approve of ‘slow TV’, and so does my cat

So I watched a BBC News report on this ‘slow TV’ with avid interest. But I’m genuinely baffled by the mass appeal. I like the idea of ordinary scenes and activities being presented to a public as something more interesting than they might at first seem but I’m amazed that people seem willing to watch very ordinary occurrences such as a fire burning and a woman knitting for hours and hours.

Gripping TV?

Past programs have included a seven-and-a-half hour train journey, a 134-hour coastal cruise, 12 hours of firewood burning and 18 hours of salmon fishing.

Hypnotic, yes, interesting, not sure.

Around 1.1 million people watched the program ‘Nordlandsbanen minutt for minutt’ which was about the longest railway in Norway. That’s a fifth of the population of Norway.

Perhaps the appeal is to a people who are tired with the contemporary pace of life (and TV) being so fast, or a people rejecting a fast pace of life. Its relaxed tempo mimics the ‘real’ pace of life, as opposed to a pace of life injected by social media, the Internet, mobile phones, work and domestic demands.

We like to see where we are going

Or maybe it works because it is new and different. Or perhaps it appeals in Norway, a country of people who are arguably (I have some Norwegian friends) more in touch with their nature and history than many others. A people more likely to yearn for gentle pleasures. Whether it will have appeal in other cultures or whether it will have any long-lasting appeal is not certain. I suspect that it won’t (the former) and it will (the latter, in Norway). I think it’s aims are laudable but I suspect that it is just too slow for most people to be able to cope with such a drastic change of pace. I think that if I am wrong and it does appeal, it will, ironically, fire up the channels to twitter and facebook as people rush to share their joy of watching someone knit a jumper.

References

BBC News ‘Norway’s slow TV attracts viewers’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25524704 [last accessed 29 December 2013]

Posted in Blog | Tagged Knitting, Norway, Slow TV | Leave a comment

Christmas Eve traditions – what’s yours?

Posted on 26 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

Recently we made a family visit to Powis Castle near Welshpool in Wales and I was inspired by an invitation to visitors to write down their Christmas traditions on a cardboard label and tie to a Christmas tree to ask friends a similar question: what is your Christmas Eve tradition? Here are the answers (not tied on to a Christmas tree though).

Me: We have a number of Christmas Eve traditions such as attend the Crib Service at the Abbey in town in the late afternoon and come home to crumpets and hot chocolate.

Crumpets and chocolate

Me: One from my childhood, or teenagehood at least, thanks to my mum, was to open just one present in the evening. It also became tradition that I cooked tea for my mum and me (usually something quite simple).

Me: I also always used to spend some of Christmas Eve with my best friend at her house. I seem to remember her family always got their Christmas tree on Christmas Eve as well from the same farm every year.

Friend One: We chuck reindeer food (porridge and glitter) all over the garden!

The reindeers’ stomachs are not neglected on Christmas Eve

Friend Two: Ditto the reindeer food also a Christmas Eve box for my daughter containing new pjs, hot choc sachet, marshmallows, chocolate to eat and a dvd.

Friend Three: My Christmas Eve tradition is going to work: after all it’s a waste of a day of leave to take if off, nothing gets done all day and you invariably leave early. Would you like a photo of me at work?

Friend Four: In Denmark we eat our dinner on the 24th. Then we dance around the tree while singing 6-7 Christmas songs before opening the presents. It’s nerve wrecking as a child!

Danish Christmas Eve Pork

Friend Five: We have a special Christmas Eve breakfast, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, yum yum and then one present before bed, which is a pair of pyjamas for everyone in the house, which have to be worn to bed, and a Christmas book for the kids! Then put out a glass of port, a carrot and a mince pie for Father Christmas.

Traditional breakfast? It is in one household

Friend Six: We go to my parent’s house for supper which is always soup served in bread bowls. Then when we get home, we all open one present containing pajamas. Everyone puts on their new pjs and we pop popcorn and watch a Christmas movie.

Lots of people get PJs for Christmas Eve

Friend Seven: We do new pjs on Christmas Eve and this year we’re giving a game (some years we might do a Christmas DVD) so we’ll all be playing pop up pirate in our new pjs this year! When I was younger we were always allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve after we’d been to mass, which became midnight mass as we all got a bit older and there was something really magical about midnight mass and the choir singing carols.

Pop up pirates

Friend Eight: We go to the pub with family and friends for a buffet, then to a carol service followed by also making reindeer food. We then watch a Christmas film and always read ‘the night before Christmas’ story in bed.

Christmas Eve down the local

Friend Nine: I always get my dog a prezzie at Christmas (Dad’s tradition) and I always watch nightmare before xmas on Christmas Eve.

This is Hallowe’en, Hallowe’en, Hallowe’en…

Friend Ten: The only thing that goes on in our house is the leaving if mince pie, whiskey and carrots for Santa and his reindeers. Mainly because we don’t celebrate ‘Christmas’ but honor the Santa fantasy.

Lucky Santa gets a candy cane

Friend Elven: We always let the boys exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. They love opening that one present on Christmas Eve.

Friend Twelve : Ours is 5.30 mass followed by chip shop chips on the way home.

Christmas Eve supper

Friend Thirteen: At my boyfriend’s we drink alcohol and play a card game called stop the bus for money and then we go to the pub for a few.

A few of these on Christmas Eve?

Friend Fourteen: We have never had a tradition other than rushing across the waves to make it home for Christmas. This year we may be starting a tradition……. Sofa, onesies, chilli peanuts and wine with a scary movie.

Scary movie and nibbles

My mum: Christmas tree and decorations put up on Christmas Eve I thought the tree was wonderful but it was little very battered artificial one about 2 foot high ( I have still got it). It was also not Christmas until my mother sang ‘Away in the Manger’ and no presents opened until the washing was done after dinner.

Friend Fifteen: We used to have a friends whose tradition was to drive round old friends on Christmas Even carol singing, it was always lovely to see them and for us the start of proper Christmas. This has stopped as everyone lives further apart etc which is sad.
This year we have made an effort to start our own tradition so we went to the carol service, came home all helped cook a big casserole for supper then I made up a box with new slippers, PJs and sweets for all. Now snuggled up watching tv with half a eye on Santa’s progress via the internet.

PJs seem to feature a lot in Christmas Eve traditions

Friend Sixteen: We have done the first one got pjs from nanny and bak bak. Now tea of ham mash potatoes peas and parsley sauce.

Yummy

What’s yours?

Posted in Blog | Tagged Christmas Eve, Collecting | Leave a comment

Going backwards, not forwards

Posted on 20 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

I heard some troubling news today, Staffordshire County Council is proposing to remove the gallery and library from the town centre Shire Hall and sell it.

The gallery inside

I’ve been there a few times with my children to look at art (and enter the annual open exhibition) and if this proposal came to fruition, it would be a huge loss. If I lived locally, I would visit more often. I think the gallery provides a wonderful cultural centre and art space for local artists.

This idea to sell the site is apparently part of a proposed plan to save the Council £109 million over a five year period. It is purely an issue of economics.

The Shire Hall – a constant feature of my childhood trips to town

It’s not clear from reading about this proposal what would happen to the gallery. I don’t mean the current space it occupies which could become a pub or a shop, but the provision of space for artistic ventures in the area. I guess nothing.

The gallery shop

The Shire Hall was built in 1798 and used to house the courts (at least that was the building’s function when I was growing up there) and it is a beautiful listed building, the centrepiece in the town centre. At some point since I moved away (in fact in 1991) the gallery and library were created and that was a great use of an old historic building in the centre of a town. It was deliberately done to create a cultural centre for Stafford with the library, gallery and theatre being placed all together.

The court room in the Shire Hall

I can’t believe they want to take that away for the sake of saving money. The council are taking the easy option. They are shedding what they see as expendable areas of expenditure. Of course it will save money but the value of what will be lost in terms of culture, the arts and a place for local artists to showcase their work to the public is worth more than the money that will be saved.

I really hope it doesn’t go ahead.

References

Stafford Newsletter, 12 December 2013 http://www.staffordshirenewsletter.co.uk/Stafford-s-Shire-Hall-Gallery-closed-radical/story-20307437-detail/story.html [last accessed 20 December 2013]

Save Stafford Shire Hall on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/savestaffordshirehall [last accessed on 20 December 2013]

Posted in Blog | Tagged gallery | 2 Comments

My friends’ things

Posted on 13 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

Thinking about our attachment to things this week, I decided to ask random friends to tell me what things they collect beyond the level of need. I was quite surprised with some of the results (toilet roll, bikes) and not surprised with others (boots, books).

Just in case there is a poo explosion tomorrow…

I wasn’t surprised that books came out as the clear winner (as book accumulation is an affliction of my own) but I was surprised to see food and wine on the list. But this got me thinking about my own buying habits. Although I cited books, boots and coats as my ‘things’, I realised that I also accumulate the less durable things in life. My list should also include cheese.

I don’t just collect lumps of cheddar (we have four in the fridge at the moment) but I also collect Mexicana, cheese with peppers, cheese with herbs and cheese with fruit.

I can’t live without this in case I fancy a nibble

This indicates to me that you can be as attached to ‘consumables’, as the economist in me calls them, such as cheese and chocolate), as you can be to ‘durables’ (another economics term, the solid stuff).

I believe that both sorts of accumulation are a positive (up to a point of course – if you can still move around your house freely around your collection then its not a problem). A need to collect to me isn’t automatically a sign of lack, or of anxiety, depression or weakness. It can be a sign of optimism, security and appreciation of ‘the little things’ in life, such as being able to have a lump of cheese with herbs when the mood arises. My collections make me happy. I love to admire my ‘to read’ book shelf. I have a special relationship with my books and this doesn’t detract my attention from any relationships I have with other people. They are not mutually exclusive. The same goes for my boots (of which I have a lot) and perhaps also the cheese. They are not compensating for a lack, they enhance the positives in other areas of my life. At least that’s my theory.

Time to stop buying teddies me thinks

I made a pie chart of the responses from my friends of their collections.

Books rule, obviously

It’s a very nice pie chart. I think I will celebrate with a lump of cheese now.

Posted in Blog | Tagged Collecting | Leave a comment

We love our things and our things love us back

Posted on 10 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

This isn’t going to be a post related to art as such, but it is related to something I became interested in during my last college art project (the absence as presence project) and something that influenced the art I created for that project.

A large part of this project involved me looking at things, more specifically, our relationship to things.

A can collection

By ‘things’ I mean the ‘things’ around us, whether it be where we live (the actual bricks and mortar), the cat, the dog, the budgie, a laptop, the TV, the Dr Who DVD collection, ceramic cats with hats on the mantlepiece, the Dr Marten boots, books, hats, clutter, post, paper, or even the lack of ‘things’.

I collect cats with hats

I recently read a book by Daniel Miller on this very subject called The Comfort of Things. In order to write this book, Miller spend around 18 months interviewing people who lived in a particular street in London about their lives and their things. The purpose was to study their personalities and individual histories through the things that they held dear to them and to ascertain how important things are to us. The book presents 30 portraits of a variety of colourful characters from all ethnic backgrounds and ages. Some of the stories are quite poignant, some uplifting, yet all are very moving.

Daniel Miller – the man who studies things

For the absence as presence art project I studied the things that are important to my children (as it turns out Lego, the Beano and a rather grey scraggly Upsy Daisy doll) and the things that are important to us all (through my collections of mantlepieces and bedside tables).

Upsy Daisy

Then I read an interesting article today about people and their things which painted a very different picture to the one I had been painting through my art. This article’s take on the subject is quite dark and gloomy. It equates the accumulation of things with a desperation to find happiness or a lack of self-esteem, which may be a symptom of depression. It cites research that suggests that when we forge relationships with things (in this case, in the form of a desire to own and show off more things) we are compensating for inability to have good relationships with people.

Which pair should I wear to do the school run in tomorrow?

I think that, counter to what this article argues, the relationship between a desire to own things and our view of ourselves or ability to forge relationships with others is less clear cut. I agree that a desire to accumulate things for accumulation’s sake and as a compensation for a lack of self-worth might be a symptom of deeper issues, but a desire to own things and a happy and fulfilled life are not necessarily mutually exclusive as the article believes. This is something that Daniel Miller also talks about. Proust would also approve of this blog entry I think.

I’m here again, you can’t get rid of me that easily.

My personal ‘materialism’ manifests itself in a desire to have more books, more boots and more coats (and more cats with hats). I don’t think that this reflects an underlying depression or a failure with human relationships on my part. I think it reflect my personality and in facts enhances my ability to forge relationships with people. I like cats, boots and reading. I have always had a book in my hand and my accumulation of books comes from an ‘eyes bigger than stomach’ type issue I have with books. I don’t have enough time to read all that I want to read but I keep finding more books that I want to read.

This is my ‘to read’ shelf

As for the cats in hats, that speaks volumes for my mental state, which is not good.

References

Miller, D. (2009) The Comfort of Things Polity Press, London

Monboit, G. (2013) ‘Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out’ The Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/materialism-system-eats-us-from-inside-out?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2 [last accessed 10 December 2013]

Posted in Blog | Tagged Collecting, Miller | Leave a comment

I can’t not write about the Turner Prize

Posted on 3 December 2013 by beckybendylegs

Last night, lying in my sick bed (or sick settee with a furry blanket) I just about managed to watch the Turner Prize 2013 winner announcement on Channel 4. I would have had to have been very poorly not to.

I have been keep a vague eye on the various news items about this year’s Turner Prize: about the fact for the first time in history the prize was to be presented in Northern Ireland, about the fact that the exhibition was to be held in Londonderry (city of culture 2013) and about the four nominated artworks (especially the fascinating weeing life model sculpture).

Excuse me, I just need a quick wee

I must admit I thought (and hoped) that David Shrigley‘s weeing life model sculpture would win. It appeals to my quirky side. It is full of contradictions and humour. The model is so badly proportioned and comic looking that any attempt to draw him accurately produces a badly proportioned and comic result. It is a gentle fun-poke at life art and art school and in a way attempts to free the potential artist from the pressures of trying to draw accurately. This piece is interactive because people are invited to take part in the life drawing class and their work is displayed as part of the exhibition. It is an invitation for anyone to draw. It is a celebration of drawing for drawing’s sake, which I like very much. Everyone should draw.

Does it look lifelike?

The other nominees included Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for her paintings of part-imaginary and part-real people which ask questions about how we read meaning into images and Tino Sehgal for his performance work which investigates the exchange between people, the artwork being a moment of philosophical debate.

What do you see?

The final nominee, Prouvost, won for her video / installation piece ‘Wantee’, which takes the audience on a search for her fictional grandfather. Even though I had hoped that David Shrigley would win, on further reflection I see why Laure Prouvost was chosen as winner. Her work (without actually having seen it myself) is said to be engaging and unique in its mixing of video and installation, creating a way for audience to involve themselves in an artwork and be immersed in it without the whole experience being twee and boringly ‘contemporary’.

Tea party

‘Wantee’ explores the lasting legacy of artist Kurt Schwitters through this fictional grandfather, who Prouvost imagined to be a conceptual artist and one of Schwitters’s close friends. The name of the work derives from a phrase used by one of Schwitters’s companions: “Want tea?”. Prouvost seems to have an unique approach to filmmaking, which she mixes with atmospheric installations. She uses the technique of story telling, sharp cuts, montage and clever misuse of language to draw the audience in and keep a pace.

The BBC’s arts editor, Will Gompertz, describes her work thus: ‘Her intention is to present work designed to confuse because she believes misunderstanding makes us use our imagination more. That in itself is an interesting thought.’ I agree. As Prouvost herself says: ‘I love the idea that everyone creates their own vision of everything you see.’ She wonders whether this idea came to her from her experiences of being a French woman living in a foreign country. I can relate to that as I lived in Japan for two years and when in those sorts of circumstances, you do construct your own version of reality based on what you see and what you can understand (which is very little if you begin knowing hardly anything about the language or culture). The longer you are in that culture you come to understand more and the picture morphs into something else. This is a very interesting concept. It can be applied to lots of things from this scenario to reading books, watching films and interacting with people. You can never say with conviction what is the truth from what you see. And your response may differ with time.

It’s a shame I can’t see any of these works for myself. If only I had a TARDIS.

References

BBC News, ‘Turner Prize 2013: Laura Prouvost wins £25,000 prize’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-25175225 [last accessed 3 December 2013]

Tate ‘Turner 2013’ http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/other-venues-ebrington/exhibition/turner-prize-2013 [last accessed 3 December 2013]

Posted in Blog | Tagged Prouvost, Sehgal, Shrigley, Turner Prize, Yiadom-Boakye | Leave a comment

Where to hang?

Posted on 28 November 2013 by beckybendylegs

I live in a town that, just like any other town in the second decade of the 21st century, suffers from empty shop syndrome. This is a sad consequence of the rise in internet shopping. Amazon.com has a lot to answer for.

Where I live

It has become apparent recently that many opportunistic arty people are seeing this as a chance to secure cheap gallery space and widen their profile. I haven’t taken advantage of this yet myself but I am not going to rule it out for the future.

Tumbleweeds welcome here

There are now websites (more than one) devoted to helping artists to finding empty shop space in which to exhibit. It is a good way for artists to start to showcase their work without too much expense and effort.

Arty people are often quite poor (art doesn’t pay unless you are very, very lucky). This way to exhibit art a bit like squatting, but with consent. Using vacant space is perfect for impoverished artists who need a lot of space but have little money. Landlords benefit from this as well, as it is a way to avoid paying business rates and other bills while their premises are empty.

JJB Sports in Wrexham recently went into administration and the shop space has been renamed Un Deg Un and has been used by many local artists. It has also hosted the local art college’s end-of-year show.

Wrexham town centre

This phenomenon also brings the people on the street into a gallery when they might normally have not bothered. It is a way to bring art to the non-gallery goers. It has frequently been documented that a certain ‘type’ of person actively seeks out a gallery to view art (middle class, middle England, radio 4 types or art students). This ‘pop up’ system is way to bring art to ‘everyone’.

These spaces also create opportunities for artists to meet other artists which may lead to future collaborations.

Its a win-win situation. Towns no longer look so much like abandoned shanty towns, artists bring their work to the public for very little money, landlords benefit from their space being used rather than left vacant, and the public have something else to do besides shopping.

You see empty shop, I see gallery

Next time you go to town and instead of HMV you see art, go take a look. You have nothing to lose, and you certainly won’t be spending money on DVDs you will only watch once.

References

Youngs, I., ‘The creative boom in empty buildings’, BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24871292 [last accessed 28 November 2013]

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Art on and of the landscape

Posted on 24 November 2013 by beckybendylegs

This weekend I have been in Cardiff experiencing a Dr Who extravaganza for the 50th anniversary of the first ever episode of Dr Who. While in that city, I took a short digression from science fiction and strange men with long scarfs to look at art at the National Museum.

They did not exterminate me

While there, I stumbled across (as one does) a touring exhibition highlighting art of the British landscape in the late 1960s and 1970s called ‘Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966-1979’.

The exhibition

I have recently gained a slightly off-the-tangent-from-my-own-practice interest in land art because of its significance for the Absence as Presence topic I am dealing with at college. Art on the land is all about making a mark, creating a presence, and then later becoming an absence. Last year, also, I learnt about ‘site specific’ and ‘expanding field’ art, which is art that works beyond the plinth and only where it is created and displayed. There is a significant overlap between land art and site specific art.

Amongst the pieces on display a number interested me particularly. My favourite was a piece by Tony Cragg called New Stones – Newton’s Tones, that combines the notion of collecting things for display with the idea of people leaving their presence in the objects that they discard.

Colourful rubbish

In 1978, Cragg collected plastic objects and fragments from along the river Rhine. He sorted and arranged them in the approximate sequence of colours present in white light, as identified by Isaac Newton. In the piece they appear fragmented as if a rainbow. His message was perhaps more about environmental pollution of the landscape by discarded rubbish but they speak to me about the things we leave behind as evidence of our presence.

Another piece which interested me was a ‘drawing’ made by Roger Ackling. I like the idea that drawing is so much more diverse than just putting a pencil, ink or paint to paper. Ackling ‘drew’ with the sun. His art presents a sort of record of time, or of weather at a particular time. It is a way to create beauty out of natural phenomena and it is art of the moment.

Drawing with the sun

This piece was made by focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass onto card. The sun burnt dots onto the card to create the marks. The stronger the sunlight (with the absence of cloud) then the darker the mark.

A third artwork that attracted my attention was a photograph of a ‘situational sculpture’ by Keith Arnatt called Liverpool Beach Burial from 1968. This consists of a long line of ‘heads’ buried in the sand facing the tide. The overall effect cuts between horror and comedy. I just love it.

Heads in the sand

Seeing heads in the sand creates a simultaenous feeling of unease and fascination. The question is: why are they doing this? Are they doing this for a joke or is it some dramatic suicide pact? Or perhaps they were buried there and they are unable to escape? I feel the need to wait and see them get up and go so I can relax again. The photograph puts me on edge.

Besides this there were pieces by well-known land and landscape artists and sculptures such as Anthony Gormley, Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long and many others I hadn’t been aware of before.

The ultimate in transitional land art

I spent a very pleasant 40 minutes (that is all I was allowed away from all the children we were with) walking around the exhibits. I could say more, but I wouldn’t know where or when to stop.

References

Arts Council, 2013, Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966-1979 (Hayward Publishing, London)

Posted in Blog | Tagged Ackling, Arnatt, Cragg, Goldsworthy, Gormley | Leave a comment

Am I an official artist now?

Posted on 22 November 2013 by beckybendylegs

Last night I had my first ever proper exhibition opening night at a place called The Hive, and in to my childhood self I had made it as a ‘proper’ artist.

Too many empty glasses waiting to be filled

Myself and the two other students on my course have had to co-organize and exhibit for our current assignment and last night we let the public in to see what we’ve been doing. I’m not going to talk too much about the various challenges and obstacles we’ve faced arranging this. Let’s just say I think that success at these things only comes from good project management (my thanks go to Oxford University Press for sending me on a three-day project management course circa 2002). For me good project management comes from the use of spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets. They aren’t very arty but they work. Without them my life would be (even more) chaotic.

I dream about these

The event went very smoothly (partly thanks to spreadsheets but mostly thanks to our hard work). We invited around 15 people each plus our college tutors and (optimistically) the press. I bought a new dress for the occasion and wore my favourite ‘going out’ boots (which got just as many complements as my paintings).

My arty boots

People mingled, nibbled, sipped and cooed in the right places. My childish dream to have an opening night with champagne and canapes had (almost) been fulfilled. The budget didn’t quite stretch as far as champagne and I’m not even sure where you get canapes from but we had posh wine and Home Bargains nibbles plus some donated olives (rather a lot of them it turns out) and home-made banana bread (which went down extremely well).

My stuff on the wall

It was both nice and scary being a co-centre of attention. I felt a flutter in my stomach at seeing people watch my videos and examine my paintings. But I found answering questions challenging (e.g. Do you think your paintings would look different if you framed them? Of course!). I didn’t want to have to justify my artistic choices. I just wanted the guests to look at the pictures and take away their own responses. My aim was to give people something to think about and hopefully go away and look at the world, at least for a while, with Proustian eyes.

My aim is to get into every post

Hopefully it was the first of many ‘opening nights’. I’d like to think that my boots might wear out from over-use. I can but dream.

Posted in Blog | Tagged exhibition | 1 Comment

The art of suffering

Posted on 16 November 2013 by beckybendylegs

At the moment I am re-reading How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton, my favourite living popular philosopher (if you have can popular science you can have popular philosophy). In this book, de Botton talks about Proust’s idea that you can only come up with interesting intellectual thought (or original artistic observations) after you have suffered in life.

Does he mean that people who suffer are intellectual or artistic, or are intellectual or artistic people are destined to suffer?

Yes, it is me again…

An artist’s more profound suffering – whether emotional or psychological – can often seem to enhance their work. This notion of the suffering artist is related to the idea of the mad artist, something I explored when I started this blog. Vincent Van Gogh painted Starry Night during a period of emotional turmoil. Apparently, John Lennon and Paul McCartney came together to make music after experiencing the deaths of their mothers.

The painter of this picture suffered greatly

Does misery result in insight? Do we only reflect on what we experience when we are depressed? When we are happy are we unable to have profound insight? Proust believed that we only take note of the details of everyday life and reflect in depth on our lives when we are suffering whether from mental or physical illness (and he suffered greatly from both during his lifetime). In many ways, I agree. When I am unwell or feeling down, time slows down and the everyday ordinary aspects of the day seem to be elevated in their importance in my mind. When I am healthy and happy, time quickens in its pace and I hardly notice anything beyond the surface. But does a profound bowt of suffering in reality result in a creative mind? Picasso felt an earthquake as a three year old. Did this lead him to art?

The earth moved and great art was the result

Suffering alone is perhaps not enough. And also, I believe that someone can create great art or philosophy without having suffered. Personally I find that I need both the down times and the up times to think up with ideas (and this in fact may may happen on a monthly basis). The ideas only spring to mind during the up times, but these ideas might have taken a subconscious root during the down times, so I need both.

The conclusion might be that suffering just opens up the possibilities for creative thinking and it is having the capacity to take advantage of these opportunities that divides the intellectual thinker from the non-intellectual thinker, and the arty from the non-arty. After all, everybody suffers. Or as R.E.M famously sang ‘everybody hurts, sometimes’.

These guys have turned suffering into music

References

de Botton, A. 1997 How Proust Can Change Your Life Picardor, London

Posted in Blog | Tagged Proust, Van Gogh | Leave a comment

BeckyBendyLegs

Slow TV – more entertaining than Big Brother

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Christmas Eve traditions – what’s yours?

Going backwards, not forwards

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My friends’ things

We love our things and our things love us back

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I can’t not write about the Turner Prize

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Where to hang?

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Art on and of the landscape

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Am I an official artist now?

The art of suffering

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