Kiss me quick, I can’t find my little Willie, a ramble about Rodin’s second Kiss now at the Turner Contemporary.

I went to Margate to see the sculpture “The Kiss” by Auguste Rodin (a note here on pispronunciation Rodin is normally pronounced Rodan, the best I have heard so far being Odin, I assume they were going on the R being almost silent in French, who say something like rODan) anyway this isn’t so much bout Norse mythology as Greek.

I wandered into the Turner Contemporary, took a few pictures, mostly trying to get a lot of reflections of The Kiss in Dainel Buren’s mirrors and then sat down to look at people looking at The Kiss. The sequence of events in today’s technological world was pretty much the same, walk towards sculpture, fumble about for mobile phone, camera or other small black technological item, take pictures of sculpture, retreat.

Eventually a chap appeared adorned with enough expensive camera equipment to stock a photography shop and started snapping away like a pro, at this point one of the gallery staff came and told him that photography of The Kiss wasn’t allowed.

This is all rather strange, my understanding was that The Turner Contemporary had banned photography in the galleries upstairs as a lot of the exhibits are still in copyright and with so many artists work on show, sorting out the copyright position would have been pretty much impossible.

Rodin died in 1917 94 years ago and copyright lasts until 70 years after the artist’s death , so what is going on there I didn’t really understand, particularly as you can photograph it when it is in its normal home The Tate Gallery.

At this point I got my sketch book out and put my camera away, I haven’t yet been ticked off for sketching in an art gallery, so this seemed a fairly safe option.

The Kiss on display in the gallery is the one I always think of as the second kiss, the first one that Rodin did was commissioned by the French government in 1888 and is now in The Rodin Museum, this one was a copy done by Rodin for a private commission. So when some sculptor says something about revealing the shape that was already there in the stone, in this case several tons of marble, you may wonder what they are blathering on about.

The history of this second kiss is rather amusing, it was commissioned by the American collector Edward Perry Warren, Edward Perry Warren was gay and apparently saw Rodin as the modern inheritor of the classical Greek tradition.

Anyway he wrote to Rodin asking that the man’s genitals be clearly sculpted in the Greek tradition, rather than modestly hidden. Warren paid 20,000 franks a lot of money in about 1900 and when the sculpture turned up things on that front were a bit disappointing.

Warren put the sculpture in his stables where it stayed for ten years, in 1952 The Tate organised an appeal for public donations and bought it for the nation for a knockdown price of £7,500.

We now have a situation where the standard Tate loan agreement says no photography so lots gallery staff time is wasted telling people not to photograph the thing, I will endeavour to sort it with the Tate for the Turner.

A point here about copyright and galleries, when a gallery says that a photograph of an exhibit they have where the a artist has been dead for over 70 years is copyright, the copyright they are referring to is that of the photographer who took the picture of the work of art, not the work of art. 

The picture above is of the Kiss etching by Marcel Duchamp, with the repositioned hand that I mentioned in a previous post.

I have been trying out a compact camera, but the delay on it is too long, so I will have to find something else, pity because the picture quality is OK, anyway here are the pictures I took in Margate yesterday http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1011/id5.htm not many because I lost patience with the camera.

Update, the Tate have agreed to relax the photography restrictions on The Kiss and as the Turner Contemporary have removed the note that photography of The Kiss is not allowed from their website, it would appear that the situation is resolved.  

Paintings of the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery in Margate

 As we have a major new art gallery designed by an internationally renowned architect, I wondered what artists had made of this civic ornament adorning Margate seafront.

I have to say that I have Googled in vain, trying to find paintings of this architectural gem.

Like Turner I keep a sketch book, there the resemblance ends unfortunately, however ts amuses my children, so here are possibly the first two paintings of the gallery.

One of the gallery, and one a notion of how it may have arrived.

The pictures should enlarge if you click on them.

Nothing But the World of Youth at the Turner Contemporary Margate

I visited this exhibition for the first time today and it is very good indeed, I had my nine-year-old daughters with me and we had all afternoon, it just wasn’t long enough and we will need to go again.

Photography is not allowed at this exhibition so they took pencils and sketch pads with them, so they could copy any pictures they liked.

The four watercolours by Turner that are hung together, were painted when he was nine (according to the sign on them although my memory of his biography tells me they were done when he was eleven and they do look like the work of a talented eleven year old) so these were of special interest. Art gallery signage is in this instance is inadequate for the enquiring nine year old, what colours did he use daddy?

I gave my best guess on this one, Indian ink, sepia ink, chrome yellow, yellow ochre, rose madder, cobalt blue, burnt umber and a pencil. Any better information on this one would be appreciated, it was an off the top of my head in the gallery answer and my guess would be that Turner added some sort of opaque white to his watercolour paintbox in later life and that was about it.

Much subsequent discussion about how a ten year old boy could have only five paints in his box and some practical experiments have ensued. If you are wondering how a nine year old managed to get hold of something as precious as rose madder, mine managed it today.

Frankly I am finding it very difficult to be critical of this exhibition, so I will stick to my childrens criticism, this was mainly that the four Turner watercolours were pretty much the only pictures that were not done by people who were a lot older than they are. Frankly these were the pictures in the exhibition that they most identified with, two of them are of Minster Church and I have had to promise my children that we will go there so that they can have a go at painting it.

As I said photography is banned at this exhibition, although a great many people were taking photographs while I was there, partly I think because there isn’t anything in the way of clear signage and partly because in this digital age the ban is almost impossible to implement. I did take a few pictures before I saw any indication that you were not allowed to.

I also took some pictures of Margate today, here are the links

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbook911/id4.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/netbook911/id6.htm

The main problems with the gallery still haven’t been resolved, which is a shame, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/05/fine-tuning-turner-contemporary-margate.html if you don't know what I am talking about.

One thing that does surprise me is the lack of news stories and reviews about this exhibition on the internet, it may be that people only want to write negative things about Margate and the Turner contemporary, something that it is very difficult to do after visiting this exhibition.

We genuinely had a good day out in Margate today and I honestly think that the other people who visited the exhibition will come back again, not to make any particular point about art but just because it was enjoyable, you could tell from the smiles on the faces.. 

Ramsgate and Margate arts this weekend

I think tomorrow (Saturday) is the big day for both towns, the new exhibition “Nothing But the World of Youth” opens at the Turner Contemporary in Margate and the Firefly Fiesta is on in Ramsgate.

Starting with “Nothing But the World of Youth” this is one I am looking forward to, with work by lots of artists including Henry Moore, Peter Blake, Sarah Lucas, Andy Warhol, Mark Leckey, Jim Lambie and David Hockney.

Photography is not allowed at this exhibition, however I will do what I can to cover it on the blog, perhaps I will take my sketch pad along as it would seem unlikely that art would be banned in the gallery.

Here is the webpage about the exhibition http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/nothing-in-the-world-but-youth it says:

Exhibition tours

Free, just turn up

Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays 11-11.30pm

The times seem a bit late to me with the gallery now closing at 6pm, perhaps this is just another example of contemporary art that is a bit elusive, or perhaps it is a good old fashioned typo.

Anyway if you get to the gallery after 6 tomorrow and find that everyone has gone home the Firefly Fiesta is on in Ramsgate from midday until 10.30pm which should just give you time afterwards to pop over to Margate and see if the Turner contemporary are giving a guided tour.

More information about the Firefly Fiesta here http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2011/09/firefly-fiesta-on-saturday-17-september.html 

Neither the Thanet District Council website nor the councils vist Thanet website are making much of either event, nothing on the TDC website which has the following events on its website homepage:

St. Laurence Church Harvest Holy Communion

St. Laurence Church Harvest Barn Dance

St. Laurence Churchyard Tour (October)

St. Laurence Church Quiz Night

The best you can say about the visit Thanet website http://www.visitthanet.co.uk is that you can find both events if you already know that they are on.

Considering that the whole of the regeneration of Margate hangs on the success or failure of the Turner Contemporary and the Ramsgate event poster says the event is produced in association with TDC it makes one wonder what they think they are up to.

I suppose it would be funny if we weren’t all paying the bill for this sort of nonsensical behaviour.  

Margate the Turner Contemporary sun sea sand pictures

 I suppose in a sense visiting the Turner Contemporary is a bit similar to visiting a religious shrine of some unfamiliar tribe of humanity.

There is a bit of a sense of the god being contemporary art, and this shrine to that god is in a different geographical area to the one indigenous to the worshipers of that god.

Discussions about the Turner Contemporary are likely to very odd, I often find myself having them with people in my bookshop, partly I think because of the books I sell about the local area. One way or another if you develop an interest in this area you eventually wind up in my bookshop trying to find out a bit more about the aspect of the Isle of Thanet you are interested in. My bookshop is on the local tourist loop, to an extent. Hence strange conversations about local landmarks.

One sort of conversation goes a bit like this:

Customer: “That Turner Centre is a waste of money.”

Me: “Well it does seem to have brought some more visitors to the area.”

Customer: “It would have been better if it has some Turners in it.”

Me (wondering a bit about the pronunciation of Souffrier): “Well what did you think of, The Eruption of the Souffrier Mountains?

Customer: What?

Me: The painting by Turner that is in display in the gallery.

Customer: I haven’t actually been inside the gallery.

Another sort of conservation goes a bit like this.

Customer: I’ve just been to the Turner Contemporary and though it was a load of rubbish.

Me: What all of it? There are several artists of international standing exhibiting there, what did you think of the Daniel Burrell?

Customer: Which one was that?

Me: The stripes and the mirrors, on and by the window in foyer?

Customer: Oh I thought that was part of the building.

Then there are the people who say they like the exhibition, in a way these are even more difficult to understand.

I perhaps would say something like, don’t you think the Burrell is a bit dated to feature in a contemporary art exhibition, when the statement was more a 60s reactionary one. The customer is just as likely to say, what Burrell?

Anyway all that aside for the moment, I still haven’t got anywhere with the design faults and the other problems that I highlighted recently, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/05/fine-tuning-turner-contemporary-margate.html

As you can see from the picture above the floor is still a bit of a mess.

Where one goes when so much money has been spent from local tax contributions and there seems to be no real desire to solve fairly minor errors, I just don’t know. I am fairly certain that if the local council had commissioned some fairly ordinary and utilitarian building with these problems, then there would have been some effort to put them right. Any other public building that had had its floor all hacked up like that would have had the floor put right by now. Little things like positioning seats too low to see over the adjacent wall, surely with a multimillion pound project shouldn’t just be allowed to pass muster.

On to yesterdays pictures, here

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/711/id5.htm

and here

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/711/id6.htm

Anyway apart from the relatively minor faults I have mentioned the gallery does seem to be helping to bring Margate back to life, so onto the pictures.

For anyone new to this, I always publish the whole lot on my camera card, not just the ones that came out ok, this isn’t much work and some people like to see them all.

When I turned up it was low tide and a bit smelly because of the seaweed, the compensation was there were some good reflections that help the photography.

I soon flagged though and had a cup of tea at BeBeached on the harbour arm. There was very little wind and some sort of dingy race going on, very nearly in the get out and swim bracket, the dingys in the photos look like toys, not a cleaver photographic trick, just something that happened.

Not many pictures of the inside of the gallery as I have already done it see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/turner-contemporary-revisited-some-more.html where there enough links to my pictures of inside the gallery to put you to sleep.

The ones of the Droit House through the windows were because there is  a distortion in the window glass that alters the shape of the side of the clock tower.

On to the second page of yesterday’s pictures, a few of the lifeboat manoeuvring on land.

Lunch at The Puffin Café on the harbour arm, I had a ploughman’s lunch and a pot of tea, they really understand this sort of thing, the pot of tea was served with civilised china and the ploughman’s cheddar, stilton and brie. My wife had Coke (the real thing cool from the fridge) and a toasted sandwich, all of it came out at about £8.50 which I consider to be very good value.

The rest of the pictures on the camera card are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/711/id7.htm some sort of peculiar roadworks here in King Street Ramsgate, where the resurfaced some of the road and left the rest full of problems.

The snails pace on the Pleasurama development, between 2 and six people working at any one time, it looks like it will take about twenty years to complete at the present pace.

Last Thursday’s lunch at the cake on Westgate promenade, ham egg and chips for me, and an abysmal attempt to sketch the musicians. I finally managed to drop my sketch book in the sea.         

Fine Tuning The Turner Contemporary Margate

Reading the comments on yesterdays post I have come to the conclusion that I need to expand on my concerns about aspects of the Turner Contemporary.

Putting to one side people’s feelings about the building, the art on display its potential in terms of regenerating Margate, there are some problems with the finish and design that need to be resolved.

I wrote to the architects about this recently, here is what I said:


In a message dated 03/05/2011 21:00:42 GMT Daylight Time, michaelchild@aol.com writes:


Please pass this on to David Chipperfield.

Hi David I have visited The Turner Contemporary in Margate on three occasions now and have some observations about the building that may interest you.

Some damage has occurred to the polished concrete floors see image 1.

There are some problems associated with the external landscaping, this is a bit of a mixed bag which I will try to explain, it seems to be at odds with the quality, both in terms of design and finish, of the building.

What seems to have been intended is a mixed pedestrian and traffic area between the gallery and the harbour, this should be workable as in terms of vehicle movements this area only leads to a small number of parking spaces.

In practice it is assessed via traffic lights from a busy road, so that vehicles enter it at a considerable speed, I sat outside the gallery for about half an hour and witnessed one near miss and one minor traffic accident. 

I assume that you didn’t have a hand in this part of the design as part of the roadway uses permeable slabs that have already become badly stained, see image 2.

There has been some attempt at signage, warning pedestrians that what looks and feels like a footpath in fact is quite a dangerous road, see image 3.

There is a sense of something gone awry in this area, it looks alright until one goes to use it, for example there are seats positioned too low to see over the wall which obscures the view of the harbour.

Please accept that this isn’t a criticism of the gallery, which is impressive.

Images attached.

Best regards Michael  

I didn’t hear anything for some time so I gave them a bit of a nudge  



From: MichaelChild@aol.com [mailto:MichaelChild@aol.com] 
Sent: 25 May 2011 11:30
To: Info
Subject: Re: The Turner Contemporary in Margate


Please confirm that you received the email below and passed it on as I asked.


If I don’t hear from you today I will assume you aren’t interested and take the issues up with the county council, the two Thanet MPs art council, media etc.  


Best regards Michael

This resulted in the following reply:

In a message dated 25/05/2011 16:30:00 GMT Daylight Time, holger.mattes@davidchipperfield.co.uk writes:

Dear Michael, thanks for your input. We are for sure fully aware of the issues.

New parking signage is in the making but we noticed that people tend to ignore the temporary signs put up already. Definitely Thanet needs to improve the parking enforcement and Turner Contemporary are monitoring this.

We fully share your view that clear signage needs to make people aware before they enter the site that there are pedestrians sharing the road.

The stains have been caused by the contractor of the Harbour View scheme and KCC have asked them to execute the required remedial works.

The sea-defense wall and benches in front of our building were outside of our design scope and we agree that this is high and blocks the view.

Regarding the magnesite screed in the building, we are not happy with the swirl marks either, but they luckily occur only in some areas and are overall acceptable we think. There was no option to relay the floor. Also the floors take a long time to dry out and settle and tend to become lighter over time, so what you see now will change over time and wear in.

We appreciate your comments and try to give input where we can to improve the condition.

Regards,

Holger Mattes

Project Architect

for David Chipperfield Architects

11 York Road

London SE1 7NX

T +44 20 7620 4800

F +44 20 7620 4801

holger.mattes@davidchipperfield.co.uk

www.davidchipperfield.com


There is a problem here which is it very uncertain if they have passed the email on to David Chiperfield and if they intend to take any action, so I sent them this further email: 



Re: The Turner Contemporary in Margate    MichaelChild to holger.mattes and Alison.Smith - yesterdayMore Details From:  MichaelChild Hide Add to: To Do, Calendar  To:  holger.mattes CC:  Alison.Smith BCC:Date:Thu, 26 May 2011 14:06
Hello Holger I am familiar your work and I guess you would be aware of the problems.


In the short-term traffic coming straight off busy traffic lights is likely to cause a fatality and adverse publicity for all involved. I think a bit more than signage is needed, perhaps some sort of physical traffic calming is needed urgently. 


I would say parking enforcement comes a long way down the line, unless you were one of the official visitors at the opening who received a fine notification for parking on the harbour arm.


The height of the wall relates to Wallingfords FRA and isn’t something that can be changed it is just that the benches are sited wrongly.


My understanding of magnesite screed is that it is a polymer and it should be possible to remove the scratches by using an abrasive, I wasn’t suggesting that the whole floor is relaid.


Anyway I will take the issues up in the hope that the situation can be improved in some way.


Can you please confirm that my email was passed on to David Chipperfield as essentially it’s his name that is on the design when it comes to public perception?  

Best regards Michael

While I really don’t think these problems should be down to me, basically I think something as important as the Turner Contemporary should have someone looking after these issues.

I suppose ultimately the customer is us the taxpayer, so it is down to us to make a fuss about the things that are wrong with what we have paid for. 


I am also not very happy about dealing with people who only reply promptly to some sort of timed warning, needless to say I haven’t had any reply to the email I sent to them yesterday.  


I know it is probably petty of me and I am certain that in the high flying world of international architecture emails from a shop assistant probably don’t seem very important, but I don’t like it when I write to one person and another one replies on their behalf, without even telling me if they have passed my correspondence to the person it was intended for.  

You can’t always say what you want

The RaspBerry

I suppose one way or another we are all waiting for a phone call, text message or email and for one reason or another we all have the phone calls, text messages and emails that we can’t or won’t do.

In these days where most people can use various communication devices to send images, I wanted to produce an image that people could send, when they can’t say what they want.

With the Turner Contemporary opening in Margate, where a lot of the art on display is and will be Modern, contemporary and some of it is and will be conceptual art, I wanted also to form some sort of link for the local people, many of whom have contributed towards the cost of this gallery, where they could see some sort of point in the this sort of thing.

If art is anything it has to be about conveying something that can’t be conveyed in words. There is also a sense in which art has to justify itself, show it has some point or purpose, this was easy in the days before photography, but now aspects of art can seem pointless.

The idea here was to produce an item, artwork if you like, that was in a sense both useless and useful and also to explain its purpose clearly.

More pictures of The RaspBerry at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/raspberry as far as copyright goes help yourselves to the images, no need to ascribe them to me or anything like that.

I did a couple of posts recently with drawings of Tracy Emin and David Cameron in them, that illustrate just how powerful a communication tool art still is. 

In both cases my posts with them were on the first page of Google today here are the screenshots 

I think it fair to say that with Google finding about 43,400,000 webpages for the search phrase David Cameron, without the art aspect my post wouldn’t have featured in the top ten.


Very little in art is entirely original, artists look at other artists work and this influences and inspires what they produce, the primary inspiration for The RaspBerry is a work by the artist Conroy Maddox called Onanistic Typewriter  you can always Google it if you want to know what I mean.


I produced a work called Onanistic Netbook here it is

Art tends to inspire reaction in other artists and two artists I was talking to and photographing this week Andrea Francke and Mary Ikoniadou added further inspiration.

I will do a post about their work and their recent appearance in Broadstairs at a later date, here are a couple of pictures I took of them at the weekend.     

A question that has been floating around here in Thanet since The Turner Contemporary opened is, what is art? And a question that has been put to people in the past is, are you an artist?

There are different answers here of course, one chap quizzed in this way drew freehand a perfect circle another a perfect straight line. No one really seems to have come up with the goods, when it comes to expressing the answer verbally.  

For me being able to draw a picture of someone that is recognisably that person, seems a reasonable qualification. 

Another indicator is putting something one has produced in front of someone who has qualified academically as an artist and having the something pronounced “good” or “OK” in terms of art, this is also something that would suggest one is an artist.

I stopped producing art in any form about forty years ago, mainly because of the trouble it caused, now I have started again and have run a few of the results through some of these criteria.

One problem is that once one starts again it isn’t easy to stop. 

Now we come to one of my concerns about The Turner Contemporary, which is are they pulling off what they hope to achieve, this isn’t quite as simple as are they getting the visitor numbers now?

What I mean here is, in the terms of the parameters of what they hoped to achieve, at the moment an exhibition of contemporary art, is what they are displaying good, average or bad.

Looked at as it were in the way readers of this blog have looked at the various bits of art that I have put there recently, does it work? This is quite easily explained in terms of the pencil sketches of Tracy Emin and David Cameron, regardless of whether you think they were good or bad, if they have changed your visual perception of these people slightly, then they have done what I set out to achieve.

I have only one only one tangible way of measuring the public’s genuine interest in what the gallery is doing and that is by looking at the viewing counters on the various videos they have published online.

The gallery published a video embedded in their website yesterday and since then it has had only 87 viewings I did the same thing with some videos on this blog on Sunday, within 24 hours they had all had several hundred viewings.

Now sitting through four or five minutes of video to the end so that the counter clocks your viewing suggests a genuine interest in the content of the video and my concern is that the genuine interest isn’t as much as it should be.             

Ramsgate art installation protest at Albion Gardens

The deforestation of Albion Square Gardens has lead to an art installation protest there.

More pictures at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/411/id11.htm initial investigations suggest that this one wasn’t funded by the Turner Contemporary, in fact who paid for the Christmas Trees in a bit of a mystery.  

Not sure if this is a Great Wall of Ramsgate art project either.  

Turner Contemporary Margate Revisited, some more photographs of inside the gallery, some criticisms and problems.

Every new project is bound to have teething problems and attract some criticism and David Chipperfield’s turner contemporary is no exception.

If you are not familiar with this art gallery I would recommend you first look at the pictures I took of the inside if it last week, here are the links to the pages with them on:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id2.htm 

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/index.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Turner/id4.htm

You may also wish to read my blog post about my first visit, here is the link http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/pictures-of-inside-turner-contemporary.html

Today’s pictures are on two pages, unedited straight from the camera card, here are the links:

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptopturner/id3.htm

I had my two youngest children with me and the way things worked out I took them both into the building for the first time separately, they both said it smells like a swimming pool, I had a good old sniff and couldn’t confirm this.

I meandered around with David Hockney in the back of my mind, the pictures are all natural light, with the obvious compensation for tungsten halogen and fluorescent, some fairly low shutter speeds all hand held, I took a tripod but didn’t use it, lens focal lengths between 10mm and 55mm, 35mm camera, sorry about the dirt in it, it’s worn out and needs replacing.

OK here comes the criticism.

The road layout outside the gallery is dreadful, one near miss and one minor accident in the short time we were there. It is summed up as fast traffic on a road full of pedestrians that looks like a pavement with badly placed traffic lights.

The surface is very porous paving slabs that are already badly stained with the oil from cars passing over it during the last week.

Inside the gallery the polished stone like textured concrete floors, that so impressed me last week, have been damaged by using the wrong cleaning equipment, not sure if this is covered by the insurance, in some places quite deep circular grooves have appeared in the surface.

Parts of the gallery were too hot on what it is a sunny April day, I don’t know if the climate control was set wrongly or is inadequate. A mixture of very large windows and the conservation of valuable works of art may cause problems.

One thing about the TC is they are very quick to rectify some errors, “closed Monday except bank holidays” is now prominently displayed at the top of their homepage.

I will start my criticism of the aesthetic on home ground, from the shop assistant perspective and point out that books published at $25 USD are not usually priced at £25 Stirling, like wot they are in TC shop.

Next the first artwork: “Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape” by Daniel Buren.

As this is art, here is a novices description, yellow stripes with a big round hole in the middle stuck to one of the windows, with lots of mirrors stuck to the walls each side.

We probably shouldn’t limit art by attaching names to it, but the stripes look a bit abstract to me, think Margate, think deckchairs and all that and the rest of course is all done with mirrors.

I was dead influenced by this work and have been playing with reflections since I first saw it last week.

The problem if anything is that Daniel Buren is just too good at this sort of thing, he has looked at the gallery space and considered what should be there, so that frankly when the exhibit is taken away, it’s going to look, well missing.

I don’t really see how having one art exhibit stuck there all the time is going to help the TC, I mean if some artist or rich bod donated them a major artwork they could play the swaps game with other galleries, but not this one, it fits where it is.

From the shop assistants point of view though, the question We find surfacing in the back of our mind, like “what is the square root of minus one” is. Is it great art or a very good start on a shop window display? Where are the goods?

One thing that I am certain of it is a particularly helpful exhibit to the photographer, like having an extra camera attachment, so thanks Dan. Or should I say, so long and thatnks for all the affichages sauvages.

There is a bit of sense of pulling no punches with this exhibition, in most cases the gallery hasn’t attempted to go for contemporary art that anyone can understand. This failure, I suppose is best expressed it terms of the failed magician, you know what I mean they haven’t gone out of their way on the sawing in half front, not even a solitary half mouse, let alone a cow.


I suppose the exception is "arcadia" by Ellen Harvey, the mundane explanation of this one is the shed within the shed. Outside the shed is something that could very well be waves projected light that could very well be particles, opposite an arcade sign. Inside the shed lots of black and light pictures of Margate.

Various engravers have had a bit of a go at Thanet and my favourite, Henry Moses, even drew a map showing where he had done the drawings for the engravings, no this isn’t a criticism, I aint saying “lacks map” and the work is certainly going down well with the locals.

There are people standing in front of the pictures saying things like. “I like that one.” Almost like being at Ramsgate’s great wall.

I thought of the gallery stairs.

I understand it therefore I like it.

I don’t like it because I understand it.

I don’t understand art therefore I like it.

I like it therefore I understand art.

Sorry lots on knots RD pass the couch.

Sorry about that I have put my shop assistant hat back on. Here in the books business a lecturer in literature postulated the notion of T S Eliot’s influence on Shakespeare, admittedly he did so in a humorous novel. However this was a problem for me, now the Turner and I have tried with this painting, but I just don’t think it is a very good Turner. One thing about though is it makes me think of the Turners that I do think are very good paintings, there aren’t many very good English artists and Turner is the exception rather than the rule, he is world class. So I found on both occasions, my mid swirl with colours, mostly goldish and surrounding some sort of focused Turnerish lump, you know the train funnel one with the viaduct exploding in Turnerishness.

Anyway this is the problem with the next exhibit “The Perfect Third” by Conrad Shawcross, the influence of Turner on Shawcross approached from the influence of E Harvey on Turner, the light that is.

So there I am with my camera playing with The Perfect Third trying to photograph the people exploding into Turnerishness.



   

I will ramble on if I get time I hope to criticise the artworks on display in this exhibition next.

Great Wall Art Expedition Opens in Ramsgate Today, The Turner Contemporary’s Mistake Revealed, Tug Open Museum Shut.

Easter Saturday and a great art exhibition in Ramsgate opens officially, click on the link to their website http://www.spanglefish.com/greatwalloframsgate/

I was down there early this morning having a preview, there is a marked contrast between this exhibition and the one in the new Turner Contemporary, which is ordinary people talking to each other about the paintings.

You don’t need to have anyone paid to tell people what is art and why, people just seem to be able to work it all out for themselves, anyone doing a silly walk, is just someone doing a silly walk. 

Here are the pictures of the pictures taken this morning http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/shop411/id7.htm I think the exhibition is pretty much complete now.

I am also experimenting with pages of pictures small enough to open on a mobile internet phone, same images here smaller http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/shop411/id8.htm

Here are some pictures taken later on when the official opening was underway

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gwro/

there is some contrast between an art exhibition in Ramsgate and some others elsewhere, I will try to get around to deleting the worst of the pictures, at the moment you will have to edit them yourself, here are some more http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gwro/id3.htm

they are uploading to the internet while I write this, I haven’t seen them either at this point, the rest should appear here soon http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/gwro/id4.htm

I belong to the slash and burn school of internet publishing, which essentially means having reduced the image size a bit, I just copy a whole batch at once and paste them onto the internet.

There may be some video footage later on. update here one is   

and another one

Update KOS has reported this event as The Great War of Ramsgate, either it’s typo of the week or thy know something that we don’t about the Royal Sands http://www.kentnews.co.uk/p_12/Article/a_13226/Great_War_of_Ramsgate_art_project_unveiled_at_Ramsgate_seafont_today

A note of interest here is that one of the directors of KOS is related to one of the directors of Cardy’s. 

Next the Turner Contemporary Revealed gaff , during an inconvenient moment today I retired into the smallest room and there was this mag about Revealed, free poster on page 14, all about JWMT on page 6, our Trace on page 11, in fact the cat’s pyjamas not the dog’s sphericals you understand.

As a fan I rushed to page? OMG no page numbers, anyone know if I have a special rare edition, or do all the other copies of the mag lack navigation.     

The Ocean Going Steam Tug Cervia moored in Ramsgate Harbour, is also open to the public over this weekend. Considerable work has been done on this restoration project, I took a few pictures of it right at the start of the restoration, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/cervia/ four pages of pictures links to the other pages at the top of the first page. Oh an a video of this too.

Ramsgate Maritime Museum however hasn’t opened for Easter, as we hoped it would. 

I will continue this post as I get time between customers in the bookshop

The Turner Contemporary and The Ministry of Silly Walks Update.

You may remember in the past I have published videos of this project that is funded by the Turner Contemporary, well here’s another one.

In these interesting economic times it is always useful to know what public money in being spent on.

For instance KCC have plans to introduce traffic gridlock in Margate, this scheme not only includes having traffic lights at the clock tower roundabout, that achieved this so well before. It expands the concept to include traffic lights instead of the other roundabout on Margate seafront and making the road a lot narrower.

The whole scheme is a snip at about £8m, you may be interested to know what KCC have to say about it.

Apparently the aim is to reunite pedestrians with the beach.

This next bits congers up images of Lego and toy cars.

Officers are working on a micro-simulation model of Margate and Westwood to study the network implications of rerouting traffic on the seafront road.

The Turner Contemporary Goes Boing

I found myself with one of those bizarre questions today which is, why has the clock on Margate’s Droit House started chiming again?

Thanet district council are responsible for public clocks in Thanet, not my words but theirs, but having gone on the usual somewhat eccentric journey around their telephone system I was told that this public clock is not on their list.

The repairing of public clocks is a very strange business, you see although the council are responsible for them, the council isn’t eligible for grant funding, something that is apparently quite easy to get for repairing public clocks.

Let us say, for example, you notice that the clock on the church has made a final clonk and no longer goes boing, what you do is this.

Contact the council and if the clock is on their list then they can start the process of getting it repaired. They will then go and look at the clock and work out how much it will cost to repair. As they are not eligible for the grant funding, although they are responsible for the clock, they then write to the vicar asking him to apply for the funding. At this point you will probably have to give the vicar a nudge, I am at the nudging stage with one of the Ramsgate vicars. Once he has obtained the grant funding the council will arrange for the clock to be repaired.

The Droit House clock isn’t on the council’s list and the Droit House belongs to Kent County Council, so I rang them up, their phone system also takes one on an interesting journey, unfortunately none of the people at KCC knew anything about this clock.

No one I spoke to there had heard of the Margate Droit House, although they had all heard of the Turner Contemporary, KCC officers seem to be somewhat in awe of this project that seems to be able to get vast amounts of funding, regardless of cuts in other places.

Certainly none of them seemed surprised that the clock had been repaired, it seemed likely that KCC had funded this, although exactly how I wasn’t able to discover, I think that this may be because of the gallery having been given a blank cheque by the council.

I then phoned Turner Contemporary, I left this last as I find it a bit embarrassing because of their telephone system and its tendency to make me giggle. The problem is that it has a lot of options, you know you get one of those recorded messages telling you that if you want to press 3 press 5, I have to be careful here or our Ken may take umbrage like he did before, oh yes back to their telephone system, despite all of the impressive options you always seem to get through to the same person.

I think they all must lead to the phone on the desk in the Droit House, I always get the feeling that I am speaking to someone who has to live on a very particular bed of eggshells that can only be generated by modern art.

There is the fear of having their lunch, umbrella etc venerated to consider, combined with living in that peculiar state of nervousness where any unusual event could be anything from an act of modern art to an art theft.

Or even the next person through the door may be a man disguised as woman because they are an art thief, or a man wearing woman’s clothes because he is a famous artist, or even just a transvestite requiring a politically correct approach.

Difficult questions like why has your clock started chiming can result in some degree of nervousness, this could be for instance be interpreted as a surrealist phone call, anyway after tactfully ensuring that I was neither a great artist or a nutter they did concede that it had recently been repaired and was indeed going boing every quarter of an hour.

They didn’t know anything about the clock, they were fairly certain that the boings didn’t have an artistic significance, best to be careful when you have a neon sign that does.

They didn’t know if the clock had any historical significance, they didn’t know who had been responsible for mending it.

I have some sort of bizarre mental picture of our Trace going binggly boing dong into a microphone, followed by skilled artisans casting bells to match, Emin she had me made.

Well the gallery opening date has been announced 16th of April, to open on the first would have taken some nerve and to open on the 23rd of April 125 anniversary of Turner’s birth would probably have put them in local election purda or some such nonsense, what a missed opportunity, perhaps they weren’t even aware of it.

The Great Wall of Ramsgate New Pictures and Graffiti Artists at Work.

A fourth lot of new pictures have gone up on the great wall of Ramsgate.

Here is the link to the pictures of themhttp://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1010

Here is the link to the first lot that went uphttp://www.michaelsbookshop.com/Julylaptop3/id9.htm

And here is the link to the second lothttp://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id11.htm

Here is the link to the third lot

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/910/id6.htm

The work in progress was exactly what modern art should be, it obviously required considerable skill, I was uncertain if it was supposed to be happening or not, I said nothing to the artists and they said nothing to me, I was taking the pictures and they were painting one.

I am afraid to say that the elitist, highly subsidised lot who have put on various exhibitions under the umbrella of The Turner Contemporary recently have a great deal to learn from the whole great wall concept.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Turner would have recognised what is going on here as art, would like everyone else, stopped to watch it happening and gained something from the experience.

The silly walk and some of the other stuff that I have seen in Margate recently I genuinely don’t think he would have recognised as art, this may beg the unanswerable question, what is art?

Perhaps we should approach this in the tradition of the mother of all sciences and ask the question what isn’t art?