Four's (part of) a Crowd...(8)

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Presenting - after a brief hiatus (a half-time interval, perhaps) - another in the series of drawings (please refer to numbers 1 - 7 & the composite of the first 6) transcribed in synechdocical part-for-the-whole fashion from the large scale broadsheet double-spread original photograph of the Euro 2008 football crowd: again, the range of the facial expressions - some more obviously revealing of emotion than others, although inscrutablity can also speak volumes in such a context - is a delight.

Soundtrack:

Primarily
Test Match Special Eng v SA, 3rd test (4th day)

also


Tunng 'Good Arrows'
Robert Wyatt 'His Greatest Misses'

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(7)

Today the opposite of tomato is Heaps of Sheeps

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Continuing the sequence of drawings transcribed from the large-scale photographic original, again in synecdochical part-for-the-whole mode courtesy of the basic grid format. In this instance, although not all the figures' faces are visible, as has been the case previously, this nevertheless seems to create a pleasing, 'human' dynamic between them.

Soundtrack:


Robert Wyatt 'His Greatest Misses'
Tunng 'Good Arrows'
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset 'The Bairns'

A visit to the local library resulted in the loaning of a couple of CDs from the available stock:
Robert Wyatt's self-chosen 'greatest misses', not least because the realisation dawned that I didn't have any of the man's music on CD, despite once owning some on vinyl, in the good old days, a grave omission indeed. How delightful to be reunited with the gorgeous & somehow very poignant reading of 'At Last I Am Free' (one of those worth-the-price-on-its-own, every-music-collection-must-have classics) & also, of course, RW's unsurpassable, heartrending interpretation of Elvis Costello's 'Shipbuilding', a song to which his singularly plaintive tones are perfectly suited to extracting maximum, thoughtful, subdued emotion (EC's own reading always seeming just a little bit too polished &, perhaps, 'cabaret' in comparison, for all of Chet Baker's exquisite contribution) & a veritable treasure trove of other absolutely unique, magical 'songs' or, perhaps more appropriately with many examples, musical works that follow their own idiosyncratic course.
Particularly of such nature, having the opportunity to hear his 'Sea Song' then inspired a comparative listen to Rachel Unthank's thus-far more familiar interpretation of the original, a good excuse to listen to another fine, rolling album of 'otherness' again.
The reflective, philosophically-inclined 'Free Will & Testament' features such an apposite lyric in "Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill", perfectly summing up the nature of much of one's modern, daily life & its insistent, clamouring commitments - "Let me off, please, I am so tired", indeed: how vital the privilege of retreating into art & one's world of, of drawing, & research, & books, & music, & cinema, the saving graces. Approaching the end of the 3rd of 9 weeks' summer break from the mostly enervating demands of the day job, I probably shouldn't complain, but still how I envied Stanley Kubrick's creative reclusiveness as alluded to in Jon Ronson's recent, intriguing TV documentary on More4, featuring the director's extensive store of archive boxes, a fascinating collection of research & other material, with such intense attention to detail, allowing intimate access to the creative process & the nature of, now in the possession of London's University of the Arts.

And Tunng - only previously, intriguingly, experienced in remixed form - & their contemporary, urban take on the tradition of folk (see also The Winterset's approach to, different, more obviously traditional in nature, but again 'expansive' in its scope), jolly good stuff, an engaging sort-of slightly skewed mix of the acoustic & electronic, great groove & relaxed ambience, frequently conversational in tone (&, indeed, form), especially sympathetic to the drawing process.

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(6)

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Presenting the sixth section of 'the project within The Project', the transcription of the newspaper photograph of the Euro 2008 football crowd &, below - to place this drawing in the context of the five preceding it, each a part of the whole yet featuring within the basic heads-within-the grid format common to either & both - is a compendium of all the drawings to date, in sequential relation to each other in the manner of Zak Smith's drawings illustrating each page of the text of Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' as described in the post dated July 5th.



Soundtrack:

Test Match Special Eng v SA

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(5)

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Continuing 'the project within The Project', transcribing discrete sections of an original large-scale newspaper photograph of a football crowd, again the drawing serves in the manner of synecdoche as part-for-the-whole, yet still the individual faces & their expressions - particularly as they generally run counter to the frivolous headgear being sported - provide compelling human detail...

Soundtrack:


Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'Best of', 'Abattoir Blues' & 'The Lyre of Orpheus'
Sol Seppy 'The Bells of 1 2'
Lambchop 'Aw, C'mon' & 'No, You C'mon'

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(4)

Today the opposite of tomato is getting the Abattoir Blues...

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Continuing 'the project within The Project'...

Soundtrack:


Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'Abattoir Blues' & 'The Lyre of Orpheus'
Bjork homemade compilation with selections from 'Debut', 'Post' & various remixes & 'Homogenic'

Time, also, to mention some music recently viewed.
Firstly, courtesy of BBC4's 'Nick Cave Night' (now there's cult programming & special interest broadcasting, for which we should be truly thankful), & thereafter again, at one's convenience through the wonders of the BBC's iplayer resources, an all-out entertaining, rocking live concert filmed, as part of the channel's 'Sessions' series, at LSO St Luke's chapel, which looks a lovely venue, on this occasion strung out & across with a myriad bare lightbulbs, featuring songs from the artist & bands' latest album 'Dig, Lazarus Dig' in addition to a variety from their extensive back catalogue, switching from full-on, foot-down performances of songs such as 'Get Ready For Love' to the hushed piano balladry of a sublime rendering of 'God is in the House', an elegiac, spare reading of 'The Mercy Seat', ending with a blistering, brooding, ever-amusing 'Stagger Lee': absolutely stonking stuff.
And then a truly wonderful compilation of TV appearances taken from 'Later with Jools Holland', spanning the better part of 20 years, from 1990 onwards, featuring a representative selection of great songs, 'greatest hits' & performances & also affording the opportunity to appreciate the ageing process in action (at least in terms of appearances, for there's no noticable diminishing of energy, they all still rock magnificently, disgracefully, in the best tradition, when required), as the Bad Seeds themselves have remained pretty much constant with occasional changes & additions in personnel. Interesting to note, particularly, with a keen eye, as always, on art history, that the multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis seems to be transforming into Cézanne...


Warren Ellis, right, with Nick Cave


Paul Cézanne 'Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat'
1875-76/oil on canvas

Further to the theme, I recently invested in the DVD of Portishead's legendary first live appearance, at the Roseland Theatre in New York, a fabulous filmed record of what appears to have been one of those events where 'you had to be there'. The venue itself, featuring a stage 'in the round', whereby the performers are thus surrounded by the audience, creates a suitable ambience & also affords the opportunity for some excellent direction, with the cameras roaming the stage & its perimeters in order to feature some terrific local, intimate footage, of the various members of the band & the orchestra accompanying them. The performance, too, is stunning: featuring the band's second, eponymous album in its entirety, supplemented by selections, 'greatest hits' from their debut 'Dummy' such as 'Sour Times', 'Glory Box' & the exquisite 'Roads', what one might imagine to be very much 'studio creations' as heard in their original incarnations are brought to life in the most thrilling, magical manner - having been fortunate enough to see singer Beth Gibbons live in concert, promoting her 'Out of Season' album, I know what a fine vocalist she is & her performance, her voice, here is wonderful, intense & emotional & technically just right. The orchestra, too, play a sympathetic part, augmenting the songs subtly but significantly, & the film has a nice 'intermission' at its mid point, featuring a couple of the songs performed in rehearsal & a selection of 'environmental' footage of NYC. All things considered, the film of the concert is an exemplary piece of work, not merely a 'live DVD' but a great film in itself.

Also a mention for PJ Harvey's 'Please Leave Quietly' DVD, featuring concert footage from the band's 'Uh Huh Her'-era UK tour, collaged together in a most original manner (observe, for instance, the numerous costume changes in the space of just one song!) & interspersed with back stage clips that really help give a nice sketchbook-diary-snapshot feel to the whole, sympathetic perhaps to the touring experience from the viewpoint of the musicians. Fantastic songs & performances too, of course, from another artist I've been privileged to see live, although not for far too long a time now. There's an excellent, fascinating interview with Polly as an extra, too, allowing intimate access to the creative process & thinking. And, neatly bringing things together, try & see Polly & that man Nick Cave again duetting in the video of the latter's lovely ballad 'Henry Lee' on the Bad Seeds' 'Videos' collection.

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(3)

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

Continuing 'the project within The Project', the 3rd drawing 'sectioned' from the football crowd original newspaper photo, reading to the immediate right of the previous entry, the cellular nature of the grid format helping the part serve for the whole, featuring as it & each does the same essential components of a person-framed-in-a-box although each face & expression is of course individual: the variety within the basic limitations serving to provide continued inspiration & freedom of expression.

This particular work (part & whole) enables me on this occasion to mention & cite as influential the work, & particularly the drawings, of Zak Smith, an artist discovered through his inclusion in the compendious survey of contemporary practice 'Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing' as previously mentioned.


Subsequently, suitably impressed, especially by the archive of work available to view on Zak Smith's own website, I invested in his book 'Pictures of Girls', which features a fine representative selection of the artist's work in various projects & allows access to a suitable study of his technique - labour-intensive, highly-detailed ink drawings with acrylic washes on plastic-coated paper which gives them a very distinctive, wonderfully fluid appearance - & equally individual style, what one might term essentially punkish & contemporary - peopled by characters very much of 'the now' - yet suffused with & quoting all manner of art & other visual references such as Klimt, Art Nouveau, Japanese graphics (contemporary & historical) & the western comic tradition, resulting in a densely-patterned, exuberantly Baroque aesthetic. Similarly, the form that many of the drawings take as individual, discrete parts of series references again graphic novels & both cinematic & literary narrative, works teeming, overflowing, with life.


The particular project of Zak Smith's to which I'd like to draw attention with which to contextualize the football crowd drawing(s) is his illustrative interpretation of Thomas Pynchon's vast, ornate novel 'Gravity's Rainbow'.
As may be observed below, this work, with a drawing produced to refer to some aspect of the text of each single page of the novel's total of 760, has, in addition to being presented in book form, like the novel it illustrates, been exhibited in its entirety, as a whole entity, where one might choose to view it for itself in such a form, & narratively, page by page, drawing by drawing, cell by cell of its grid format, or otherwise free-associate between various separate drawings, up, down, backwards, forwards, diagonally, jumping across at will, reading them in a very postmodern, non-linear, rhizomic fashion.


Also included is an example of a couple of the separate pages of the project, again illustrating the artist's general technique & the method - which has directly informed the football crowd drawings - of applying local colour to certain areas of the otherwise starkly monochrome drawings.
With the football crowd drawing, it seemed an obvious choice to primary-colour the various headgear & replica shirts of the supporters.



Soundtrack:


White Stripes 'Elephant' & 'De Stijl'
Elliott Smith 'From a Basement on the Hill'
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man 'Out of Season'

Four's (part of) a Crowd...(2)

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

...Being the second drawing transcribed from the original newspaper photograph of a Euro 2008 football match crowd, this one following on to the right of the previous example, again, in its gridded format, serving as a discrete unit &, as synecdoche, as a part of the whole.

Enjoying the movie 'American Splendor' (as mentioned previously & now forming a part of the DVD collection) once again last night, it occurred that the drawings as a sequence (as intended) would function in some form in the manner of a comic strip & its consecutive panels, each relating to the previous one & establishing a dialogue with, constituting a narrative as they progress. In both instances, the individual cells function as discrete units, drawings in the own right, but having greater meaning when experienced cumulatively (although the football crowd drawings may be less dependent on this to a degree & also enjoy greater 'relational' freedom with adjacent sketches).

Soundtrack:


'The Essential Leonard Cohen'

Four's (part of) a Crowd...

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 16/06/08

This drawing is a small section transcribed from a larger photographic original that formed the 'Eyewitness' centrespread in that day's (broadsheet format) 'Guardian'. The main appeal is that the figures, the faces, are arranged, contained, within a perfect grid format (our Modernist friend), one to a cell, formed by the metal safety barriers of the architectural structure of a football stadium (the photo was in fact taken at a Euro 2008 match). The range of expressions on the individuals' faces - often at odds with the colourful, oft-extravagant & mostly frivolous headgear they sport in support of their teams-nations - is, of course, a fascinating, human aspect of the image, & a challenge to realise in the context of the transcription of, in effect, a multiple portrait.

The intention is that the remainder of the original photograph will be 'processed' in similar manner, the separate, discrete sketches then going to form a much larger, multi-panelled piece: a project within 'The Project' as each of the individual drawings are to the whole.

Euro-centric

graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
original source: ‘The Guardian’ 16/06/08

The original image from which this drawing was transcribed was chosen, as always, for a specific, ‘essentially’ photographic quality, namely the capturing of a frozen moment of movement, & also the contrast between this & the stillness of the standing figure who acts as the fulcrum around which the arrested action revolves. Technically, the working-back-into the mark-made ground of the drawing assists the sense of dynamism communicated by the image, relating it, spiritually, to Boccioni’s Futurist painting of soccer players used to illustrate the previous post ‘Art & Sport’.

Subconsciously, Euro 2008 is still exerting a significant influence over the content of the current choice of imagery, but undeniably the tournament is producing some compelling photographs to accompany & document the on-pitch action: on an aesthetic note, Holland’s decision to forego the wearing of the ‘magic’ sky blue socks that had seen them prevail over both Italy & then France in such thrilling fashion obviously sapped them of the means to prevent their demise at the hands of Russia…

Soundtrack:

Lambchop 'Damaged' & 'How I Quit Smoking'
The Delgados 'The Great Eastern'
Belle & Sebastian 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress'
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man 'Out of Season'
Portishead 'Dummy' & 'Portishead'

Yves Saint Laurent

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 03/06/08

Amongst the photographs illustrating the newspaper obituaries of Yves Saint Laurent last week appeared the particular one from which this latest drawing was transcribed: quite possibly it’s my favourite of the source material used so far, having a compelling appearance so redolent of the Sixties amongst its attractions which also include the basic composition & the expression in the model’s eyes – as befitting the subject, perhaps, it’s such a stylish image in every way.

The drawing itself is the second made from the original inverted, as in the recent example similarly inspired by Malcolm Morley's habitual method of doing so - again, the process of transcription becomes a more abstract one, resolving itself into a figurative whole upon completion & re-invertion the right way up again.

Obviously being aware of YSL’s iconic status but not necessarily of all the subtleties as to why exactly – I’m no great follower of fashion or its history, whilst attempting to remain stylish at all times, of course, at least in one’s own idiosyncratic manner! - something struck me as being perfect aesthetically, fashionably, yet unusually, whilst keeping an eye on the Euro 2008 football match between Holland & Italy. Traditionally, the Dutch players sport orange socks to match their always vivid shirts but the latest, current incarnation of their strip featured a delightfully surprising variation in the form of sky blue socks: somehow, this just looks so absolutely ‘right’ – my favourites for the tournament, certainly for these aesthetic reasons, which are the only ones that matter…although the breathtaking speed & precision with which the team broke & scored 2 of their goals in the match are perhaps another & footballing reason to be attracted to them. On a related point, it should be noted that the Italian shirts were, unfortunately, a shade or 2 darker than their usual perfect, beautiful, deep azure ‘Azzurri’ blue – a reason perhaps for their less-than-perfect defensive frailities that enabled the Dutch to so ruthlessly defeat them.



Soundtrack:


PJ Harvey 'White Chalk'