Encountering an Image: Delaunay's 'Endless Rhythm'



 

 

 

"1. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: & he led the flock to the backside of the desert, & came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

 

2. & the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: & he looked, &, behold, the bush burned with fire, & the bush was not consumed.

 

3. & Moses said, I will now turn aside, & see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

 

4. & when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, & said, Moses, Moses. & he said, Here am I. 

 

5. & he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

 

6. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, & the God of Jacob. & Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God."

 

 

- Exodus, Ch.3

 

Endless Rhythm by Robert Delaunay, 1934

 

 

Recently, my uncle & aunt sent me this image on a birthday card. It completely knocked me out. It was new to me: Delaunay had been nothing more than a name. I realised that I responded powerfully to the image because it seemed to me to refer to other images which hold great significance for me. I want to tell you what those images are, go into some aspects of what they mean, & show how this illuminates this painting.

 

This painting is on display in Tate Modern. You can find out more about it on the Tate website here: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/delaunay-endless-rhythm-t01233

 

 

A phrase which I thought of to describe this painting is - a circuit of continous flow.

The first image I was reminded of is the Yin/Yang sign:

 

When you look at the 3 circles in Endless Rhythm with the opposition black/white, the similarity is obvious. The yin/yang sign is a description of the fundamental energies in the universe, & how they are in dynamic tension. Yin (black) is considered to be female energy & yang (white) is male energy. You will notice that there is a spot of yin inside the yang, & a corresponding spot of yang inside the yin. The significance of this is that while one side - let us say for the sake of example yin - waxes & waxes to its maximum, there is still a spot of yang remaining which will be the root of the reaction, the point from which in turn yang will wax & wax, until it reaches its maximum, whereupon the remaining spot of yin within the yang comes into play: and so on indefinitely, or at least until the end of the universe, if there is such an event.

A mundane illustration of this idea is if you think of political history in the UK from 1979 to 2000 or so. The Conservatives came to power in 1979, & from a very weak & uncertain beginning became gradually more & more powerful, until they reached a maximum - let's say the Poll Tax riots in the spring of 1990 - after which the became gradually weaker & more decadent, until their terrible defeat in 1997. That was one half of the yin/yang sign. Meanwhile, the other half was also in operation. The Labour Party waned as the Conservatives waxed; Labour dwindled & dwindled until they reached their minimum & then began to recover; although Kinnock lost the 1992 election, the movement to make Labour more centrist was already in train for Tony Blair to accelerate massively after he became leader in 1994. Then Labour's landslide election victory. So by 1997 the UK has seen one full cycle of yin & yang, starting from 1979. The cycle did not start in 1979 of course, there had been many, many such cycles in - in this instance - our history. Nor did it end in 1997. After that, Labour waxed & waxed while the Conservatives correspondingly waned. Note that the symmetry between yin & yang at any given point in the cycle is approximate, not exact. Reality is messy.


Here are three other mundane illustrations of this idea. First, laundry. When you are laundering a set of dirty clothes, after which they will be clean, the clothes you have on are the foundation of the next set of dirty clothes. Second, eating. When you have had enough to eat, when you are satiated, you will eventually become hungry again: it is inevitable. Your hunger will increase gradually from the moment of satiety until hopefully you will be able to satisfy it again. Third, washing. Even if you become as clean as it is physically possible to be - by taking a Turkish bath, say, or a sauna - you will start to become dirty again immediately that cleaning session is over.

Since I am reading & researching Montaigne's Essais at the moment, I was interested to see the yin/yang idea expressed quite independently & in another context, in Terence Cave's How To Read Montaigne. At the end of ch.7, Cave writes:

"Such is the 'self-portrait' of the Essais, a portrait engendered by time & chance & always open to new shifts of perspective. Secondly, this tension between a centrifugal surface & a solid, centripetal core exactly matches the opposition we have already encountered between a restlessly questing mind, able to think otherwise, & the cautious, even conservative mindset that at key moments emerges to hold heterodox thought in check. Indeed, 'opposition' is no doubt the wrong word here. The two poles of the apparent antithesis are in fact interdependent, viscerally connected [my emphasis]. It is as if the sense of having deep roots, a stable point to hold on to, licensed the imaginary journeys that Montaigne's 'fantasy' is only too willing to embark on."

- p.94



So the yin/yang symbol is about opposites in dynamic tension. One can also see the symbol of the cross as representing these as well:

It doesn't matter whether you asign yang to the horizontal bar & yin to the vertical, or vice versa; the point is in the cross we have opposites in dynamic tension just as with the yin/yang symbol. If we for the sake of argument assign yin to the horizontal bar, then we can rotate the cross 1 time & the yin is now the vetical bar. Rotate it 1 time again & yin is again the horizontal.  Rotate it 1 time again (3 times from the start) & yin is again the vertical. & so on.

Imagine the cross clicking around like the barrier in a toll-gate:

"13. Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, & broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, & many there be which go in thereat:

14. Because strait is the gate, & narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, & few there be that find it."

- Matthew, Ch.7


Now we can consider a list of opposites which can constitute yin on the one hand & yang on the other, & vice versa. Note that the terms in each particular pair of polarities are not neatly equivalent with all the others: it is not the case that the term on the left always equals yin or the term on the right always equals yang. No preference is expressed here for either term in each polarity. Each individual pair of polarities could be written the other way round: & in fact they will reverse as described above if you move round the cross 1 place or 3 places. The polarities here mentioned are some of the almost infinite cycles of which the Universe is composed. The list is intended to be illustrative not exhaustive: feel free to add your own.


good/evil                                          night/day                                      past/future
known/unknown                              morning/evening                          hot/cold
open/hidden                                     winter/summer                             fast/slow
attractive/repulsive                          spring/autumn                              in/out
white/black                                      easy/hard                                      start/end
red/green                                          empty/full                                    earth/sky
asleep/awake                                   dirty/clean                                    youth/age
dream/reality                                   low/high                                       mad/sane
intuition/reason                               down/up                                       light/dark
thick/thin                                         left/right                                       cat/dog
fresh/rotten                                      unconscious/conscious                wisdom/folly
top/bottom                                       sun/moon                              breathe out/breathe in
female/male                                     heaven/hell                                  eat/shit
have/lack                                         past/present                                  right/wrong
here/there                                        present/future                               right/left
potent/impotent                               lost/found                                     free/captive
well/ill                                             good/bad                                      short/long
love/hate                                         God/Devil                                     big/small
Love/Strife                                      0/1                                                grail/lance
absence/presence                            expansion/contraction                  diastole/systole
fat/thin                                            favourable/adverse                       positive/negative
wet/dry                                           permitted/forbidden                      hard/soft
clear/obscure                                  valuable/worthless                        certain/doubtful
tall/short                                         rich/poor                                        potential/actual
heavy/light                                     concrete/abstract                            truths/lies
blunt/sharp                                     hope/despair                                   apposite/irrelevant
alive/dead                                      concentrated/diffuse                       is/is not
yes/no



The second image Endless Rhythm reminds me of is the caduceus. This is a very ancient symbol of which, like many such, the ultimate origin is unknown. The word caduceus is Latin derived from the Greek karykeion, meaning a herald's staff (from the Greek keryx = a herald.) Hermes held a caduceus because he was the messenger of the gods; therefore in Roman mythology, so did Mercury. I am not concerned here with the representation or meaning of the caduceus in classical antiquity: rather with how this symbol came to be used in alchemy, especially in the early modern period. Here is a modern rendition of a caduceus:

 

 

 

You can see it consists of two intertwining snakes around a staff which is surmounted by a set of wings. The pattern of the intertwining snakes echo the three cirles of Endless Rhythm: this is also another case in which we have opposites in dynamic tension,as in the yin/yang sign & the cross.

 

Mercury was tremendously important to the Alchemists, in fact it was a sine qua non: not the chemical element mercury as we know it today, but philosophical mercury. As Lyndy Abraham explains in A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery [exact details of works referred to will be found in the bibliography at the end of this piece]:

 

"Mercurius is present everywhere & at all times during the opus. From the dark chthonic beginnings of the opus to the divine, triumphant completion, Mercurius is not only the prima materia (the 'mother' of metals) which is sought at the beginning of the work, but also the ultima materia (the philospher's stone), the goal of his own transformation. Mercurius is not only the matter of the work but stands also for all the processes to which this materia is subjected. He is simultaneously the matter of the work, the process of the work, & the agent by which all this is effected."

 

- p.125

 

 Let us now look at some depictions of the caduceus in alchemical texts:

 

Emblema X from Atalanta Fugiens (1618) by Michael Maier. It is captioned:
"Da ignem igni Mercurium Mercurio & sufficit tibi. Give fire to fire, Mercury to Mercury, and it suffices thee."

 

 

 

 

Illustration to The Twelve Keys by Basil Valentine from Michael Maier's Tripus Aureus (1618). Klossowski de Rola's [see Bibliography] gloss on this image is as follows: "The contenders (Fixed and Volatile) are seperated and reconciled in the person of Philosophick Mercury or Twofold Mercury - so called to differentiate it from the first Dissolvent which is obtained in the First Work. The youthful god's nudity indicates the absence of impurities and the crown his nobility. The double Caduceus coupled with the Sun and the Moon on either side shows his twofold power. The wings in the foreground designate the goal of the operation: the Volatization of the pure portions of the Fixed. The Snake on the sword indicates the Dissolvent, and the Eagle on the other the means to be used."

This is captioned De cavernis metallorum occultus est, qui Lapis est venerabilis. HERMES.   From Le Triomphe Hermetique (1689) by Alexandre Toussaint de Limojon de Saint-Didier. Klossowski de Rola comments "'In the cavern of metals is hidden that Stone which is venerable. (HERMES)'. The Stone of the Philosophers, the metallic Earth, when identified, is extracted from the mine, purified & dissolved. The first Mercury is obtained, then the second or Philosophick Mercury symbolized by the entwined Snakes; next in order comes Sulphur, which is then elaborated into the Perfection of the Phoenix and crowned by the Triple Crown."

 

 



 



 

The third & final image I think of when seeing Endless Rhythm is another ancient symbol adopted by the alchemists. This is the ouroboros (also transliterated 'uroboros'), the snake swallowing its own tail.

 

Ouroboros is Greek, literally 'tail-devouring', from oura a tail, & boraein to eat. In a brilliant marginal note in his The Alchemy Reader, Stanton J. Linden has this to say about the ouroboros:


"One of alchemy's most ancient symbols, the tail-biting serpent has many significations: e.g., the All, the unity of matter, eternity, rejuvenation, the circular nature of the alchemical process with the interconvertibility of the elements; and . . . Mercurius, the agent of transformation that both kills (or is killed) and restores."

- p.65

As Jung writes in Psychology & Alchemy :

"The dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol in alchemy of which we have documentary evidence.  It appears as the uroboros, the tail-eater, in the Codex Marcianus, which dates from the 11th c. or the 12th c., together with the legend: en to pan (the One, the All). Time & again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one & leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail."    - p.293, par.404

This is the ouroboros from the Codex Marcianus which Jung is referring to.

You can see the ouroboros in the centre of this page from Pandora (1582) by Hieronymus Reusner.

"The alchemists were fond of picturing their opus as a circulatory process, as a circular distillation or as the ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail, & they made innumerable pictures of this process."

- Jung, Aion, p.264, par.418



Emblema XIV from Atalanta Fugiens (1618) by Michael Maier. Captioned Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans.  Klossowski de Rola comments: "'Here is the Dragon that devours his own tail'. This Dragon, Ouroboros, is perhaps the oldest hermetick hieroglyph, symbolizing the Unity of Matter & the Subject of the Wise; or more precisely the Mercury of the Wise, in which, assert the Philosophers, everything is found: 'From the One to the One by the One.' Roob [see Bibliography] comments: "The ancients, Maier writes, saw the Ouroboros ring both as "the change & the return of the year" & as the beginning of the Work in which the poisonous, moist dragon's tail is consumed. When the dragon has completely sloughed its skin, like the snake, the supreme medicine has risen from its poison."

In Psychology & Alchemy , Jung writes:

". . . the double nature of Mercurius, which shows itself most clearly in the Uroboros, the dragon that devours, fertilises, begets, slays & brings itself to life again. Being hermaphroditic, it is compounded of opposites & is at the same time their uniting symbol [my emphasis]: at once deadly poison, basilisk, scorpion, panacea & saviour."

- p.371-2, par.460

From Abraxas en Apistopistus (1657) by Johannes Macarius. Roob comments: "Both the Ouroboros & the Scarab are an expression of the 'hen to pan', the eternal transformation of the Ever Unchanging.'"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISBNs are given as 10 digits, except where the book is recent enough to have a 13 digit ISBN.

Works consulted in the preparation of this piece

Abraham, Lyndy    A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery      CUP, 1998  ISBN 0521000009

Cave, Terence         How To Read Montaigne    Granta Books, 2007   9781862079441

Jung, Carl               Aion                                                         Routledge, 1991 
                                                                                                Collected Works vol.9 part II
                                                                                                             0415064767

,,        ,,                    Psychology & Alchemy                          Routledge, 2nd ed. 1968
                                                                                                                           vol. 12
                                                                                                                   0415034523

,,        ,,                    Alchemical Studies                                  PUP, 1967
                                                                                                                            vol.13
                                                                                                                         0691081499

,,       ,,                     Mysterium Coniunctionis                        PUP, 1963
                                                                                                                             vol.14
                                                                                                                       0691018162

Klossowski de Rola, Stanislaus     The Golden Game:
                                                        Alchemical Engravings of the 17th century
                                                                                            Thames & Hudson, 1988
                                                                                                                         0500279810

Linden, Stanton J.    The Alchemy Reader             CUP, 2003              0521796628

Roob, Alexander       Alchemy & Mysticism                    Taschen, 1997        382288653X


Further reading on the subject of Alchemy

Burckhardt, Titus        Alchemy                                     Fons Vitae, 1997     1887752110

Coudert, Allison          Alchemy                              Wildwood House, 1980     0704504138

Gilchrist, Cherry          The elements of Alchemy   Element, 1991              1852302054

Thompson, C.J.S.         Alchemy & Alchemists       Dover, 2002                  0486421104

Camus & Painting

Albert Camus (1913-60)

Camus liked referring to paintings in his writing.

For example, the sly & comical way he introduces Van Eyck's The Just Judges into La Chute (The Fall )*.

The Just Judges (full length)

 (Here is the link for that image above. You can see it in another screen & click on it to enlarge it: http://framingpainting.com/Uploadpic/Jan%20van%20Eyck/big/The%20Ghent%20Altarpiece%20The%20Just%20Judges.jpg )

The Just Judges (the group of figures)

"    A propos, voulez-vous ouvrir ce placard, s'il vous plaît. Ce tableau oui, regardez-le. Ne le reconnaissez-vous pas ? Ce sont Les juges intègres . Vous ne sursautez pas ? Votre culture aurait donc des trous ? Si vous lisiez pourtant les journaux, vous vous rapelleriez le vol, en 1934, à Gand, dans la cathédrale Saint-Bavon, d'un des panneaux du fameux retable de Van Eyck, L'Agneau mystique . Ce panneau s'appelait Les Juges intègres . Il représentait des juges à cheval venant adorer le saint animal. On l'a remplacé par une excellente copie, car l'original est demeuré introuvable. Eh bien, le voici. Non, je n'y suis pour rien. Un habitué de Mexico-City , que vous avez aperçu l'autre soir, l'a vendu pour une bouteille au gorille, un soir d'ivresse. J'ai d'abord conseillé à notre ami de l'accrocher en bonne place et longtemps, pendant qu'on les recherchait dans le monde entier, nos juges dévots ont trôné à Mexico-City , au-dessus des ivrognes et des souteneurs. Puis le gorille, sur ma demande, l'a mis en dépôt ici. Il rechignait un peu à le faire, mais il a pris peur quand je lui ai expliqué l'affaire. Depuis, ces estimables magistrats font ma seule compagnie. Là-bas, au-dessus du comptoir, vous avez vu quel vide ils ont laissé."

- La Chute , p. 134-5, Editions Gallimard

"By the way, will you please open that cupboard ? Yes, look at that painting. Don't you recognise it ? It is The Just Judges. That doesn't make you jump ? Can it be that your culture has gaps ? Yet if you read the papers, you would recall the theft in 1934, from the Saint-Bavon cathedral at Ghent, of one of the panels of the famous Van Eyck altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb . That panel was called The Just Judges . It represented judges on horseback coming to adore the sacred animal. It was replaced by an excellent copy, for the original was never found. Well, here it is. No, I had nothing to do with it. A frequenter of Mexico City  - you had a glimpse of him the other evening - sold it to the gorilla for a bottle, one drunken evening. I first advised our friend to hang it in a place of honour, & for a long time, while they were being looked for throughout the world, our devout judges sat enthroned at Mexico City  above the drunkards & the pimps. Then the gorilla, at my request, put it in custody here. He baulked a little at doing so, but he got a fright when I explained the matter to him. Since then, these worthy magistrates form my sole company. At Mexico City , above the bar, you saw what a void they left."

- The Fall , p.94-5, Penguin 1963, trans. Justin O'Brien

[*La Chute  consists of a monologue by a man called Jean-Baptiste Clamence addressed over some time & in different circumstances to a companion who you never find out who it is exactly: in effect the reader is this companion, the one being talked to. To describe La Chute some more, I am going to quote the blurb on the back of my English edition: "Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Paris barrister, appeared to himself & to others the epitome of good citizenship & decent behaviour. Suddenly a handful of circumstances explode his sleek self-esteem, & he sees through the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence to the condescension which motivates his every action. Running from this discovery first into debauchery, then into self-judgement, he finally settles in the fog-bound wilderness of Amsterdam's waterfront where, a self-styled 'judge penitent', he describes his fall to a chance acquaintance." Mexico City  is the name of the bar Clamence frequents, & where he first meets the person who is the addressee of the novel. The Gorilla is the owner/barman of the Mexico City .]

The Adoration of the Lamb aka The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan & Hubert van Eyck, completed 1432. You can see The Just Judges bottom far left.

Re-reading the book for this piece, I found that Clamence points out the place where a painting has been hanging but isn't any more above the bar in Mexico City  to the unknown person he is speaking to in the 3rd paragraph of the book when they first meet. The section quoted above is from near the end of the novel. The Just Judges really was stolen in 1934, it wasn't recovered when Camus wrote the book, & in fact it has never been recovered. It was replaced by a copy in 1945.

Man in a Red Turban by Jan van Eyck, 1433. Some scholars think this is a self-portrait.

The spark for this piece came from my delight at finding the following in Camus' essay Sketch of One of the Elect° : it is one person I love, Camus, referring to another I love, Piero della Francesca. (I don't have the French text for this.)

Frederico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, c.1472-4

"It would be puerile to exaggerate the meaning of these confessions. They are the significant shadows of the portrait, the fold of the lip which Piero della Francesca gave to the Duke d'Urbino. It would be nothing without the rest, the hard eyes, the imperious nose, & even the landscape in the background. But, without it, the face would lose its secret & its humanity."

°from 'Lyrical & Critical', Hamish Hamilton 1967, trans. Philip Thody

Luchino Visconti, 1972

The following is a transcription of a section of interview from a television film, shown in 1972, that Bailey made about Visconti, while the latter was filming Ludwig. Visconti was himself homosexual, which I think is what Bailey circling around here. Visconti's replies here strike me as extraordinarily sane, hence worth transcribing. [Note: When Visconti says Caesar, he does not say it See-za like we do, but Chay-sa, with the stress on the 1st syllable: think of how Italians pronounce the name Cesare]

Luchino Visconti

Bailey: The other thing is lots of your characters are homosexual, like .... Visconti: [assenting] Um. Bailey: .... Death in Venice, & Ludwig is doubtful .... Visconti: Yes, yes, a little bit Damned too [The Damned, Visconti's film of 1969]. Bailey: Why is that ? Do you think homosexuality has anything [inaudible] ? Visconti: I think it's a human condition, homosexuality, like others, like heterosexual & other things. Why we have to, to .... how you say ? .... to don't talk about something. Everything is in life is important, everything is interesting, everything is - you know - If you say that I make the story, well not the story but the biography of Ludwig of Bavaria who had something of homosexual inside, alright, but I can also make the story of Julius Caesar, also Julius Caesar was homosexual, you know ? Is not so important, but if there is I don't think you must .... tacere .... you understand ? ..... No ? Bailey: No. Visconti: Tacere means not talk about. You must talk about. If there is, we must talk about.

Dirk Bogarde & Visconti on the set of Death in Venice, 1971

Lucian Freud

I just watched a terrific BBC documentary about Lucian Freud: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cdhs5

One thing that struck me forcibly was how amazingly good he was at depicting volume & depth in what is after all something really in 2 dimensions, for instance the volume of bodies.

They mentioned painters who he was influenced by, Dürer & Francis Bacon.

His painting also made me think of Holbein; of the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Millais when he was young, that incredibly detailed rendering of plants; and of Picasso, particularly Freud's stuff from the late '40s, the simplification of forms & use of strong outlines, e.g. Girl with a Kitten, 1947:

The intense & vivid expression in the eyes of that kitten is astounding, non ?

It was curious to me that the documentary never mentioned the painter with whom Lucian Freud has the most obvious affinites - Degas. Freud shares Degas' brilliance at depicting horses, & Freud's nudes are so reminiscent of Degas' drawings of women bathing, so objective & detailed, drawing & painting them it is often said of both painters as if they were animals, which of course they - we - are. (Degas - The Tub, 1886):

Is Conceptual Art Exhausted ?

These reflections were prompted by going to see the exhibition Glamourie in Leeds, where my cousin Harry Meadley is among artists showing their work: http://www.glamourie.co.uk/

I would like to preface these remarks with a piece of rhyme written by me some time ago, which may be borne in mind through everything that follows. It's called Aesthetics Solved.


There are only two rules in aesthetics -
The rest are just imposture & prosthetics.
The first concerns the spectator
Which is, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:
The second concerns the doer -
Which is (there was never one truer)
There's more than one way to skin a cat -
And that, my dear Doctor, is that.


Many people are suspicious and dismissive of conceptual art. "Why can't they paint proper paintings ?" is a line often taken. "Proper landscapes like Hockney is doing at the moment or proper portraits like Lucian Freud. They do this stuff because they can't draw !" Many people think conceptual art is a con, & at best they are just having their leg pulled by someone they would refuse the title 'Artist' to. Others think that although conceptual art had something going for it in its early days in the hands of its pioneers, Duchamp especially, it's now played out, its practitioners just repeating the same old formulas.

No doubt most conceptual art isn't very good, but in this it only resembles everything else, most of everything isn't very good: most thrillers, most television programmes, most pop music, most poetry, most plays, most figurative art, most self-help books and so on.

I would investigate this question of is conceptual art exhausted by means of analogies. If someone painted a near-perfect Impressionist landscape (that style is about 150 years old), or a picture in the pure cubist style (100 years old), my reaction for one would be "Very nice -but what's the point ?" Similarly if a jazz musician insisted on composing in the Be Bop style (70 years old). Is conceptual art like this ?

There is another analogy though. Let us say that conceptual art starts with Duchamp's Fountain in 1917. It is thus about 100 years old. Figurative art in its modern sense began in the first half of the Fifteenth century in Italy & the Netherlands. For convenience, we could pinpoint Masaccio's The Holy Trinity (c. 1427) in Santa Maria Novella in Florence & van Eyck's The Arnolfini Wedding (1434) in the National gallery in London as prime examples of the new style. 100 years later takes us to Cranach, Hans Holbein, Durer, Breugel the Elder, Michelangelo, Titian, Giorgione to name but a few of the titans of that time. Can I seriously say that figurative art as a style was exhausted by then ? Rembrandt, Velazquez, David, Goya to name only four Masters lie as yet unknown & hidden in the future, beyond this 100 year deadline.

To take another analogy, is Blues exhausted as a form ? One starting point for Blues as a recorded form we can say Bessie Smith in 1923, or for Delta Blues, Charlie Patton in 1929. Some would argue that Blues is played out. I however think that it has life left in it.

Similarly, is Philosophy exhausted ? It started, according to tradition, in 585 BCE with the work of Thales of Miletus. That's a long time ago. Despite this, as far as I am concerned, it is most definitely not exhausted, it is still going strong.

I can see no reason that a style or method of approach is limited definitely to 100 years or thereabouts of life. If conceptual art as a style has the vigour that figurative art has already demonstrated, then it is by no means exhausted.

Against Coldplay

The following was prompted most immediately by catching Coldplay at the end of Later Live .... with Jools last night. Behind it lies their appearance at Glastonbury this year, & a close acquaintance with what I hesitate to call their oeuvre, acquired unwillingly while working in retail, in a shop that sold music to be exact. My time in retail coincided closely with Coldplay's rise to prominence. I vividly recall Parachutes gradually becoming a bigger & bigger hit. All their subsequent albums were played *cough* extensively in the shop. So I know whereof I speak.


Of all the bands that have high reputations, Coldplay seem to me to deserve theirs the least. The appeal of Coldplay eludes me, especially given their level of success, which I find almost inexplicable. It's not that I can see they are good in some sense but just not to my taste; I don't admit that they're good at all.

Coldplay seem to me the dullest band in the world. Here's another song exactly like the last, which was rubbish, with no memorable melody & indifferent lyrics. Even their name itself - Coldplay. What does that mean ? A dull label for dull contents. Vacuous, thin, vague, pointless, hollow.

The only reason that I can think of for their success is that many people must want 'music' that is unchallenging, easy, substanceless, that doesn't upset them or invite them to think. Coldplay are the Indy-stadium eqivalent of Mantovani or James Last.

One of the tests of quality in Art is, "Would the world be a poorer place without it ?" Coldplay emphatically fail this test. If they had never existed, nothing would have been lost.

On Being Walloped Right Between The Eyes

The following is a list of those rare things that walloped me right between the eyes the first time I encountered them, a moment in each case of being transfixed by its effectiveness & utter relevance:


1. Sweet Sir Galahad by Joan Baez, performed at Woodstock.


2. The film Le Feu Follet ,directed by Louis Malle.


3. A Heart Needs A Home by Richard & Linda Thompson, performed on The Old Grey Whistle Test.


This experience is infrequent & extremely personal. A major part of the impact is precisely that the impact is unforeseen, unanticipated.

This puts these particular items in a special category for me all of their own. The initial contact, the lightning-strike, is beyond enjoyment; it is about absolute recognition.

Before, I am sitting down just to give them a go, see if they're any good or not, but something quite different happens ....

.... do you know the feeling ? What are your equivalents ?