Spent the past couple of days in London. Stayed at Dean Street Town House which is just perfect. Perfectly well-appointed. Huge rooms, pale pink curtains, heavily interlined. A wonderful shower and a great coffee-making facility. Delicious, hand-made biscuits. The little dog and I luxuriated in acres of white linen and huge, fluffy pillows.
This morning I walked to Oxford Street through Golden Square. Lovely to be home in London. Lovely. I was stopped by a beautiful, blue-eyed youth who wanted to talk about the little dog.
The beautiful youth not withstanding the streets are unusually crammed with ugly British people Christmas shopping. Big faces on bald heads. Prematurely middle age. Marching up and down Oxford Street clutching at grim paper bags and their final straw. Pasty, miserable, bespectacled boats.
Boat race=face.
The damp streets. The gray sky. Oh this is my darling England.
Stopped in at a pop up gallery on Berwick Street and bought:
By Christian Brett.
I thought in the circumstances..very appropriate!
Anyway, if you are interested in this and other work go to:
www.picturesonwalls.com
As a free gift, comes with every purchase, they gave me an original art work by Banksy….a brown paper bag with a Marks and Spencer type logo that reads ‘Marks and Stencils’ and is already selling on eBay for ninety quid.
Had a long chat with the curator Sam (knows Wendy Asher) who felt that the whole STREET ART movement had been suspended in aspic for the past decade and I think that he may very well have hit the nail on the head. He didn’t feel as if he had ‘grown up’ that things had remained static, unevolved, complacent.
My own contemporary art world gripe: how come so few artists have anything relevant to say about world altering current events like Iraq? For instance? Who is making work about that?
Most conceptual, contemporary art is so bloody insular and self obsessed. The entitled, bloated Tracy Emin (for instance) has become unashamedly bourgoise and so, I am sad to say, are the rest of the YBA wankers.
Why make work about a corrupt war when I can tell you all about my vagina/blood/self?
The art of ME. I am all I ever think about… etc.
It’s Jay’s fault. He loves a good title and a decorative flourish. Jay Jopling has never been interested in political art and that, my friends, is very sad.
I mentioned Joseph Kosuth to Sam the pop up shop curator as an example of an artist who might have an opinion about the war and the bloody peace.
What is conceptual art? The ‘value’ of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art.
Conceptual art is based on the notion that the essence of art is an idea, or concept, and may exist distinct from and in the absence of an object as its representation. It is called Idea art, Post-Object art, and Dematerialized art because it often assumes the form of a proposition (i.e., a document of the artist’s thinking) or a photographic document of an event.
Conceptual art practices emerged at a time when the authority of the art institution and the preciousness of the unique aesthetic object were being widely challenged by artists and critics.
Conceptual artists interrogated the possibilities of art-as-idea or art-as-knowledge, and to those ends explored linguistic, mathematical, and process-oriented dimensions of thought and aesthetics, as well as invisible systems, structures, and processes.
Artists such as Joseph Kosuth and members of the Art & Language group wrote theoretical essays that questioned the ways in which art has conventionally acquired meaning. In some cases such texts served as the art works themselves.
Dinner with Nicola and Chris on Saturday night. Lovely. We ate oysters, game pie and vegetables. Ended up flirting with a cute doorman with footballers thighs in some club on Dean Street. He was ‘straight’ so I walked away. Damn.
This evening I met Charlie at a huge ‘A’ gay Christmas event. I met loads of people. Lovely (sexy, charming, witty and down-to-earth) Dutch/Kiwi man and his friend but the BEST was a gallerist/singer songwriter called Robert Diament who I could totally FALL for. I kissed him goodnight.
Out sexy gay man with a brain. Huh? How did that happen?
Well, it’s not going to happen In the cold light of this sober day (Monday morning) he’s far too young and until my heart is mended…I really can’t imagine letting anyone near me.
Drove back to Whitstable with Alma who is very funny and we giggled for miles.
Anyway, as I have said before..after letting you know my initial impressions of someone ‘special’ I won’t be writing about them again. Can you tell that I am having a nice time? That I am happy? Can you? I am safe and warm (house is a bit chilly) and enveloped by love?
I forgot to mention yesterday…I bought a hat at Kokon to Zai. It is rather splendid.
Then I went to bed…good night…sweet dreams.
