The Commonwealth games reminds me to say something I have been considering for a long time.
Sprinting events have a long history of performers whose achievements suddenly rise to extreme heights, either (or both) in terms of their own career or global performance standards. In almost all cases of such steep rise, artificial stimulants were involved. The performances of the adored Usain Bolt, who is the biggest draw in contemporary athletics, rose with awesome steepness. See
http://engineeringsport.co.uk/2012/06/21/how-fast-is-usain-bolt/.
Five Jamaican athletes have already tested positive for drugs:
http://news.sky.com/story/1115711/five-jamaican-athletes-fail-drug-tests
The world of athletics has a huge investment is Bolt being "clean". If, to use a cliché, I were a betting man (I have never laid a bet on anything), I would not put any money any top current sprinter running below 9.80 seconds not being eventually exposed as a drug cheat, using techniques that are currently difficult to detect. I hope that this is not the case. Bolt is properly regarded by myself and the world at large as "clean" until proved otherwise. But the history of athletics, and its willingness to welcome back those convicted, does not encourage me to be optimistic that new revelations will not emerge
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
Gustav Metzger, major artist i
On Saturday I was at a conference in Cambridge organised to celebrate the exhibition of the life and work of Gustav Metzger at Kettle's Yard. Do I hear the question "who?", even from people who are well-informed about contemporary art. The problem is that he has, over the course of a heroically consistent career, created works based on processes rather than the depositing of artefacts as fixed and marketable commodities. If someone asks, "where do I go to see his works?", the question is not easy to answer. For the most part his oeuvre is known through a very patchy visual record of photography and film, and recreations of the kind in the Kettle's Yard show and earlier in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1998-9 (the publication for which I wrote an essay).
Arriving as a teenage refugee from Hitler's Germany in 1939, he studied at the Cambridge School of Art. Some biographical details are at http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/exhibitions/2014/metzger/ and in the excellent publication by Lizzy Fisher.
He was a pioneer of auto-destructive art and auto-creative art, in which processes driven by technologies and cutting-edge science create results that impermanent and unpredictable. Most famous are the remarkable liquid crystal displays in which wall-size panels undergo wondrous changes of form, colour and light. I devoted one of my columns in Nature to their Oxford manifestation (reprinted in Visualizations, OUP). I include the text at the end. At least the recreation in Cambridge is owned by the Tate.
Unlike many young radicals, Metzger has never compromised to become a maker of expensive collectables. His social and artistic mission remains, at the age of 90, undimmed by time and inevitable physical frailty. This mission is summarised in the "Harmony" declaration to which he contributed in 1970 (reproduced in the book of the show). Just two excerpts will demonstrate its prophetic nature:
"The traditional Techniques of European civilisation for control of out environment have developed to the point of creating desperate problems that cannot be solved on their own terms...
The whole enterprise of science is a branch of the apparatus of production: of commodities, of war, and of consciousness. It has more or less autonomy depending on local circumstances. Up to now its relative independence has been both a precious freedom for the few, and a convenient myth for the many."
I would now add to the second of these, which is very much of its time, "political imperatives based on the national economic demands and the trans-national dictats of big business". Metzger loves true science, dedicated to the disclosure of the nature of things, as I try to argue in my Nature piece, below. He is to my mind one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century.
_________________________________________
Art that relies upon the witnessing of a process confounds our expectation that any act of making in the ‘Fine Arts’ should result in a collectable artefact - an expectation that we do not impose on theatre or musical performance. The work of Gustav Metzger is particularly infuriating in this respect. His programme of ‘auto-destructive art’, launched in his London manifesto of 1959, leaves behind no permanent object or enduring trace - frustrating mercenary dealers and acquisitive museum curators. His ‘aesthetic of revulsion’ which relishes forms and modes of expression that ‘are below the threshold of social acceptance’ insults the established criteria of those who aspire to appreciate ‘Art’. And his apparently anarchic media, such as the nylon canvases dissolved by acid spray into apparent nothingness, set him up as a prime candidate for ridicule by the popular press and those who decry ‘modern art’ as fraudulent.
The destructive processes which form one strand of his activity are a response to the events which marked his personal and political life. Born in 1926 as the son of Polish Jews in Nuremberg and exiled with his elder brother to England in 1939, Metzger’s student years were ravaged by a war in which his parents were immolated, and the art of retaliatory mass destruction was first practised at Hiroshima. In life as in art, he has fomented rebellion. In company with Bertrand Russell and fellow anti-nuclear protesters, he was one of those imprisoned in 1961.
Science - and this is where he qualifies for inclusion in our present context - has been a constant concern in his art. Science is neither automatically demonised nor gratuitously exploited. On one hand, he has savaged the way that scientific technologies have ruthlessly extended man’s destructive potential, forcing the old concept of ‘Nature’, ideally inclusive of man, to become the ‘Environment’, which is to be managed from ‘outside’ by mighty human agencies. And he bears witness, metaphorically in his auto-destructive acts, to the awesome ‘tearing apart’ and ‘annihilation’ practised by nuclear physics in its dismembering of the atom.
On the other hand, Metzger recognises that ‘each disintegration.... leads to the creation of a new form’, a transformatory process that leads logically to the other side of his artistic and social coin - ‘auto-creative art’. Setting up physico-chemical reactions to produce growth and metamorphosis, ‘auto-creative’ works exploit the potential of such physical wonders as liquid crystals and new technologies, and most notably computing, to forge art-forms that serve as theatres of natural process. A central ideal is non-predictability, resulting in ‘a limitless change of images without image duplication’.
His most prominent creations in this ‘auto-creative’ mode are his liquid crystal projections, invented in 1965 and first manifested on a huge scale at concerts by ‘The Cream’, ‘The Who’ and ‘The Move’ at the Roundhouse in London at the end of the following year. For a series of exhibitions in 1999, the ponderous 1966 programme of twelve apparatuses operated by a dozen assistants, which operated less than smoothly, has been replaced by a computerised system. Six automated projectors, equipped with devices for the heating and cooling of slides of liquid crystals, work according to a non-repetitive programme to cast images through rotating polarised filers onto the walls of the gallery. The endless sequence of infinitely varied configurations and colours pulse with similitudes of organic processes, orchestrated according to individualistic timetables. They simultaneously suggest microbiological metabolisms, geo-physical phenomena, chemical reactions, physical processes and the artificial beauties of the kind of abstract art that rose to prominence in the 50s and 60s with the Abstract Expressionists. During a sustained viewing when they were on show in the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, there were recurrent though non-identical resonances with the floating veils of colour on the canvases of Mark Rothko.
On one side of his coin Metzger displays our potential to become the agents of irreversible destruction; on the other he rejoices in our creative integration with the life-giving properties of nature. His mission fuses art and political meaning. He is intending that we should see that the choice of on which side coin falls is literally too vital be left to the short-term expediencies of commercial gain.
Arriving as a teenage refugee from Hitler's Germany in 1939, he studied at the Cambridge School of Art. Some biographical details are at http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/exhibitions/2014/metzger/ and in the excellent publication by Lizzy Fisher.
He was a pioneer of auto-destructive art and auto-creative art, in which processes driven by technologies and cutting-edge science create results that impermanent and unpredictable. Most famous are the remarkable liquid crystal displays in which wall-size panels undergo wondrous changes of form, colour and light. I devoted one of my columns in Nature to their Oxford manifestation (reprinted in Visualizations, OUP). I include the text at the end. At least the recreation in Cambridge is owned by the Tate.
Unlike many young radicals, Metzger has never compromised to become a maker of expensive collectables. His social and artistic mission remains, at the age of 90, undimmed by time and inevitable physical frailty. This mission is summarised in the "Harmony" declaration to which he contributed in 1970 (reproduced in the book of the show). Just two excerpts will demonstrate its prophetic nature:
"The traditional Techniques of European civilisation for control of out environment have developed to the point of creating desperate problems that cannot be solved on their own terms...
The whole enterprise of science is a branch of the apparatus of production: of commodities, of war, and of consciousness. It has more or less autonomy depending on local circumstances. Up to now its relative independence has been both a precious freedom for the few, and a convenient myth for the many."
I would now add to the second of these, which is very much of its time, "political imperatives based on the national economic demands and the trans-national dictats of big business". Metzger loves true science, dedicated to the disclosure of the nature of things, as I try to argue in my Nature piece, below. He is to my mind one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century.
_________________________________________
Art that relies upon the witnessing of a process confounds our expectation that any act of making in the ‘Fine Arts’ should result in a collectable artefact - an expectation that we do not impose on theatre or musical performance. The work of Gustav Metzger is particularly infuriating in this respect. His programme of ‘auto-destructive art’, launched in his London manifesto of 1959, leaves behind no permanent object or enduring trace - frustrating mercenary dealers and acquisitive museum curators. His ‘aesthetic of revulsion’ which relishes forms and modes of expression that ‘are below the threshold of social acceptance’ insults the established criteria of those who aspire to appreciate ‘Art’. And his apparently anarchic media, such as the nylon canvases dissolved by acid spray into apparent nothingness, set him up as a prime candidate for ridicule by the popular press and those who decry ‘modern art’ as fraudulent.
The destructive processes which form one strand of his activity are a response to the events which marked his personal and political life. Born in 1926 as the son of Polish Jews in Nuremberg and exiled with his elder brother to England in 1939, Metzger’s student years were ravaged by a war in which his parents were immolated, and the art of retaliatory mass destruction was first practised at Hiroshima. In life as in art, he has fomented rebellion. In company with Bertrand Russell and fellow anti-nuclear protesters, he was one of those imprisoned in 1961.
Science - and this is where he qualifies for inclusion in our present context - has been a constant concern in his art. Science is neither automatically demonised nor gratuitously exploited. On one hand, he has savaged the way that scientific technologies have ruthlessly extended man’s destructive potential, forcing the old concept of ‘Nature’, ideally inclusive of man, to become the ‘Environment’, which is to be managed from ‘outside’ by mighty human agencies. And he bears witness, metaphorically in his auto-destructive acts, to the awesome ‘tearing apart’ and ‘annihilation’ practised by nuclear physics in its dismembering of the atom.
On the other hand, Metzger recognises that ‘each disintegration.... leads to the creation of a new form’, a transformatory process that leads logically to the other side of his artistic and social coin - ‘auto-creative art’. Setting up physico-chemical reactions to produce growth and metamorphosis, ‘auto-creative’ works exploit the potential of such physical wonders as liquid crystals and new technologies, and most notably computing, to forge art-forms that serve as theatres of natural process. A central ideal is non-predictability, resulting in ‘a limitless change of images without image duplication’.
His most prominent creations in this ‘auto-creative’ mode are his liquid crystal projections, invented in 1965 and first manifested on a huge scale at concerts by ‘The Cream’, ‘The Who’ and ‘The Move’ at the Roundhouse in London at the end of the following year. For a series of exhibitions in 1999, the ponderous 1966 programme of twelve apparatuses operated by a dozen assistants, which operated less than smoothly, has been replaced by a computerised system. Six automated projectors, equipped with devices for the heating and cooling of slides of liquid crystals, work according to a non-repetitive programme to cast images through rotating polarised filers onto the walls of the gallery. The endless sequence of infinitely varied configurations and colours pulse with similitudes of organic processes, orchestrated according to individualistic timetables. They simultaneously suggest microbiological metabolisms, geo-physical phenomena, chemical reactions, physical processes and the artificial beauties of the kind of abstract art that rose to prominence in the 50s and 60s with the Abstract Expressionists. During a sustained viewing when they were on show in the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, there were recurrent though non-identical resonances with the floating veils of colour on the canvases of Mark Rothko.
On one side of his coin Metzger displays our potential to become the agents of irreversible destruction; on the other he rejoices in our creative integration with the life-giving properties of nature. His mission fuses art and political meaning. He is intending that we should see that the choice of on which side coin falls is literally too vital be left to the short-term expediencies of commercial gain.
Thursday, 10 July 2014
security
Following the Snowden revelations there has been a consistent campaign by the literally unholy alliance of state and commercial bodies who profit from the excessive levels of snooping and security to which we are all subject. We are led to believe that the gormless youths in an ISIS video represent a threat to the state. We are told that Islamic extremists have new kinds of explosives. We are told that we need to switch on our phones and computers at airports. Where is the evidence of the levels of threat and risk to which we are said to be subject in our daily lives? We ask for evidence. "We cannot show you the evidence because that would compromise security". Those with huge vested interests in scaring us can't loose. We cannot trust governments in this, because any government naturally wants more information on us than it should have.
I have been told by security staff at an airport that "this is being done for your safety". I have not asked anyone to carry out expensive and time-consuming checks that are ritualistic in ineffective. I can tell anyone who is interested how to get a penknife on to a plane. Or maybe I won't because it would compromise security.
There are half a million people now employed in the security industries in the UK, costing us billions of pounds. A substantial portion of this cost represents the conjoined success of terrorist threats and the security industry. Terrorists and those employed in security thrive in their entirely symbiotic relationship.
The levels of risk to me and you of terrorist attack are infinitesimally small. There are almost 30,000 gun deaths in the USA each year, none the result of terrorist activity. The lifetime risk of being killed on the roads in the UK is an astonishing one in 240. If a fraction of the money spent by security cabals on combatting chimerical risks was spent on improving road safety, something worthwhile could be achieved. If a fraction of the money was spent on the poorest sector of our population, infant deaths would drop significantly.
Every time any security official or representative of commercial security is interviewed in the media, whatever they ostensibly say can be read as "give us more resources [i.e money]". They cannot loose. But we do.
I have been told by security staff at an airport that "this is being done for your safety". I have not asked anyone to carry out expensive and time-consuming checks that are ritualistic in ineffective. I can tell anyone who is interested how to get a penknife on to a plane. Or maybe I won't because it would compromise security.
There are half a million people now employed in the security industries in the UK, costing us billions of pounds. A substantial portion of this cost represents the conjoined success of terrorist threats and the security industry. Terrorists and those employed in security thrive in their entirely symbiotic relationship.
The levels of risk to me and you of terrorist attack are infinitesimally small. There are almost 30,000 gun deaths in the USA each year, none the result of terrorist activity. The lifetime risk of being killed on the roads in the UK is an astonishing one in 240. If a fraction of the money spent by security cabals on combatting chimerical risks was spent on improving road safety, something worthwhile could be achieved. If a fraction of the money was spent on the poorest sector of our population, infant deaths would drop significantly.
Every time any security official or representative of commercial security is interviewed in the media, whatever they ostensibly say can be read as "give us more resources [i.e money]". They cannot loose. But we do.
Brazil and the World Cup
Another post after a long gap.
There's been much discussion of Germany's 7-1 victory over Brazil in the semi-finals. The prime reason, which seems obvious, has been largely missed.
The fervour before the game was totally excessive. The Brazilian players became so wound up that they totally lost control. The began by attacking in a shapeless and random manner. Players who were ostensibly defenders surged impulsively forwards, driven by great doses of adrenalin. Any sense of position and team set-up dissolved in the waves of fervour. Huge gaps developed in the mid-field and defense. The Germans only needed to play a good professional game to score more or less at will.
The moral of this is that when players, supporters and media forget that sport is sport, a game is a game, grotesque things start happening. It is fair enough to feel joy when your team triumphs; it is understandable to feel sad when your team looses. As a supporter of Dundee United I have plenty of practice at the latter. But (pace Bill Shankly - http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/bill-shankly-in-quotes ) it is not a matter of life and death. The death of one malnourished child in a Brazilian favela is infinitely more serious than Brazil conceding 7 goals.
There's been much discussion of Germany's 7-1 victory over Brazil in the semi-finals. The prime reason, which seems obvious, has been largely missed.
The fervour before the game was totally excessive. The Brazilian players became so wound up that they totally lost control. The began by attacking in a shapeless and random manner. Players who were ostensibly defenders surged impulsively forwards, driven by great doses of adrenalin. Any sense of position and team set-up dissolved in the waves of fervour. Huge gaps developed in the mid-field and defense. The Germans only needed to play a good professional game to score more or less at will.
The moral of this is that when players, supporters and media forget that sport is sport, a game is a game, grotesque things start happening. It is fair enough to feel joy when your team triumphs; it is understandable to feel sad when your team looses. As a supporter of Dundee United I have plenty of practice at the latter. But (pace Bill Shankly - http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/bill-shankly-in-quotes ) it is not a matter of life and death. The death of one malnourished child in a Brazilian favela is infinitely more serious than Brazil conceding 7 goals.
Saturday, 5 April 2014
I was shocked and saddened to hear of Hasan Niyasi's death (see some earlier blogs and http://www.3pipe.net/). I was contacted with him initially in connection with the Leonardo portrait of a young woman. He had an excellent grasp of the key issues and more logical good sense than many art historians. My subsequent contacts confirmed that he was a better art historian than a good number who are paid money for being so. We never met in person, alas.
I am currently in dialogue with a dealer about attributions (in general). I will see if he is willing for it to be posted in honour of Hasan.
Unlike Holmes, not being a pipe-smoker, I go for the three-coffee problem.
I am currently in dialogue with a dealer about attributions (in general). I will see if he is willing for it to be posted in honour of Hasan.
Unlike Holmes, not being a pipe-smoker, I go for the three-coffee problem.
Monday, 24 February 2014
Ukraine
I meant to write this 3 days ago. I know Ukraine a little, and have good memories of visiting Kiev and Odessa (including the Eisenstein steps). The media were so obsessed with describing yet another incoherent uprising that they missed the big potential scenario. Now they are asking, more or less. The scenario runs thus.
President Yanukovych goes to the East, where he enjoys support. He musters, from remnants of the army and local militias, a force to claim back power. He does not have that force but as "democratically elected president" he invites Russian military support, which is forthcoming. Putin did this in Georgia, and he is former communist apparachik. What does America do? This is the most dangerous moment since the Cuban missile crisis.
If the "West" had seen its interest threatened in the way that Russia sees on its behalf, they would be supporting "democracy" against the subversive mobs.
Russia and the West as always operate according to perceived self-interest. It is ugly and extremely dangerous for all of us. And the decent people of Ukraine are left with a future that promises nothing good. Ukraine could be model of East-West co-operation. It is proving the reverse. Like Syria.
Friday, 17 January 2014
The Oscar season has arrived. This year the choice is rather stark. It could well confirm the parochial and internalised (and ultimately unethical) values of the Academy - if such confirmation is necessary. The front-runners for the best film are 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and Gravity. American Hustle is the kind if film that Hollywood does exploitingly well - fast, funny, full of narrative action and characterful people (all over-acted). It also belongs to the genre of film in which we are seduced by charismatic crooks - like Butch Cassidy..., and Bonnie and Clyde, and the another nominated picture, The Wolf of Wall Street. Of these the Wolf stands at the extreme end of the scale, since it concerns a living crook who is clearly raking in money from being convicted of crimes. Gravity is a fine film, visually compelling and unafraid to use slow long-shots, but vitiated by the metaphysical re-appearance of the male astronaut to give Sandra Bullock life-saving instructions. Presumably, being George Clooney, they could not kill him off so early in the film.
This leaves only one choice. Please take it.
This leaves only one choice. Please take it.
banks and bonuses
Bankers bonkers bonuses again. The two main justifications for huge pay, as for other executives, which are rolled out again are never or rarely challenged in the media.
The first is that a corporation must pay a competitive rate to obtain the services of the "best" executives. This policy has failed dramatically. The banking collapse was the responsibility if those who had been recruited and remunerated on precisely these grounds. It would be far better not to have the "best" - i.e. those macho manipulators who are paid obscene salaries - but to recruit someone less exciting who has a measured sense of responsibility.
The second is that bonuses "incentivize" (horrid word) people to work harder. Bonuses may have encouraged executives to take risks, but if employers and employees are loyal and motivated, they should not (and generally do not) work hard or less hard in direct proportion to their pay. I would not have worked 10% less hard if I had been paid 10% less, and I would not have worked 10% harder for 10% more pay. I would have been pleased to be paid more - but that is another matter.
For some years I have been a "member" of the Co-operative bank, run by a financially illiterate reverend drug-taker. This an excerpt from the letter I have written to them.
"The bank and all those responsible for its operation over the last 5 years should be in no doubt about the level of betrayal felt by its customers. I joined the bank because it was a co-operative and therefore different from other banks. The behaviour of the executive and the failure of the board to operate due diligence, not least in appointing the CEO, has been terrible even by the decayed standards of British banking.
The first is that a corporation must pay a competitive rate to obtain the services of the "best" executives. This policy has failed dramatically. The banking collapse was the responsibility if those who had been recruited and remunerated on precisely these grounds. It would be far better not to have the "best" - i.e. those macho manipulators who are paid obscene salaries - but to recruit someone less exciting who has a measured sense of responsibility.
The second is that bonuses "incentivize" (horrid word) people to work harder. Bonuses may have encouraged executives to take risks, but if employers and employees are loyal and motivated, they should not (and generally do not) work hard or less hard in direct proportion to their pay. I would not have worked 10% less hard if I had been paid 10% less, and I would not have worked 10% harder for 10% more pay. I would have been pleased to be paid more - but that is another matter.
For some years I have been a "member" of the Co-operative bank, run by a financially illiterate reverend drug-taker. This an excerpt from the letter I have written to them.
"The bank and all those responsible for its operation over the last 5 years should be in no doubt about the level of betrayal felt by its customers. I joined the bank because it was a co-operative and therefore different from other banks. The behaviour of the executive and the failure of the board to operate due diligence, not least in appointing the CEO, has been terrible even by the decayed standards of British banking.
Whatever assurance the bank may
provide, any organisation dominated by hedge funds and other financial
manipulators will clearly not have “members” welfare as its top priority.
Customer care and service will become, as it is for all banks and large
business entities, a tool of corporate self-interest rather than a goal in
itself.
I will remain with the bank for
the time being, largely because there is nowhere else to go."
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