{"id":1157,"date":"2020-03-10T09:24:40","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T09:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2020-03-10T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T09:28:09","slug":"play-it-on-picassos-mandolin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2020\/03\/10\/play-it-on-picassos-mandolin\/","title":{"rendered":"PLAY IT ON PICASSO\u00b4S MANDOLIN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PLAY IT\nON PICASSO\u00b4S MANDOLIN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Guy Clark\u00b4s Boats To Build album itself, when first released in 1982, caused me a great deal of confusion. I had always loved Guy\u00b4s songs of dust trails and freeways and of crazy characters and their complicated relationships but this album took me in directions I wasn\u00b4t then ready to take. I pompously wrote a somewhat stinging review in a major country music magazine and found myself taken to task on BBC Radio 2 by Wally Whyton on an edition of his weekly country music show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That a former children\u00b4s entertainer had contradicted me whilst\npresenting a show on BBC Radio 2 that I enjoyed, but sniffily thought of as\n\u00b4mainstream, \u00b4 didn\u00b4t bother me too much, but what did bother me was that Wally\nwas certainly no wally and actually knew his stuff and argued his case well. I\nhad no choice but to open my mind and listen to the album again. A couple of\nweeks later I wrote a grovelling apology and retraction of my previous comments\nand now, some thirty years later, Boats To Build is among my ten favourite\nalbums ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picasso\u00b4s Mandolin is a track that at first sounds to be a celebration\nof the musician, then seems to be an homage to the Spanish artist but is\nperhaps better interpreted of a declaration of an attitude to life. Like many\nof Guy\u00b4s songs it is an extension of an aphorism, one that in this case tells\nus that \u00b4you\u00b4ve got to play it just the way that it feels.\u00b4 We wrote recently\non these pages of some young musician-students we saw who were taking a year\nend exam, by taking part in a first public performance, accompanied by their\nmusical teacher \/ mentor. One of the most impressive features of that concert\nwas that the four players all individually played it the way it felt rather\nthan slavishly following what they had been taught. In other words they\nsurrendered to the music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realise now that Guy Clark was also reminding us that it was with a\nsimilar attitude to his own art form that Picasso painted. Like the best music,\nhis paintings seemed improvised, or at least off the cuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I was reminded by a recent review in the Financial Times Arts &\nLife pages that actually Picasso\u00b4s work was always far more prepared than\nimprovised. The review was of an exhibition called Picasso And Paper, currently\nshowing at the Royal Academy and was a really good read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer Jackie Wullschlager describes Picasso as \u00b4the most inventive, original,\nprotean artist of the 20th<\/sup> century\u00b4, and says the exhibition is \u00b4an\nenthralling shadow retrospective.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a similar collection myself when I visited the Madrid gallery to\nview \u00b4Guernica\u00b4 in all its horror. The painting was complemented, if that is\nthe right word by Picasso\u00b4s dramatic drawings and gouaches of the wounded,\nwretched horse at its centrepiece, that were the artist\u00b4s blueprint for his\nwork. Picasso And Paper similarly employs such drafts and diagrams relating to\nall the artist\u00b4s major works<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wullschlager\nsays of  \u201cFemmes \u00e0 leur toilette\u201d, that\nit is a collage of bright wallpaper samples reworked into a grotesque interior\nwith repeated contorted figures of Dora Maar, in a bizarrely ornamental,\nmixed-media take on the \u201cWeeping Woman\u201d paintings.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing\nthese developments on paper, that subsequently realised masterpieces of art, is\na bit like listening to an expert record producer revealing the layers of music\nthat make up classic pop albums like Sergeant Pepper\u00b4s Lonely Hearts Club Band\nor Graceland. These papers seem to offer us a deconstruction of Picasso\u00b4s\ngreatest hits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nsome ways the collection offers us a glimpse of the ephemeral, free spirit that\nGuy Clark seems to suggest when he sings of emulating Picasso by deciding \u00b4I\u00b4m\ngonna mix my paint with verve.\u00b4 in the same way as I can listen to a lyric or\nread a poem and argue many different \u00b4meanings\u00b4 so Wullschlager admits that he\ncould \u00b4spend a day engrossed in such formal yet psychological battles\u00b4 over\nPicasso\u00b4s work. He tells us of \u00b4strong fluid lines manipulated into casual,\nexpressive brilliance.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\ncontrasts that notion of the \u00b4pencil barely seeming to rise from the paper\u00b4\nwith a \u00b4hard, symmetrical rendering\u00b4 via, \u201cOlga In A Hat With Feather\u201d, of\nPicasso\u00b4s wife that he says \u00b4balances virtuosity and dislike.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nexhibition has all been curated unobtrusively by Ann Dumas and William Robinson\nthat tells not only the story of Picasso, but also of the twentieth century of\nwhich the artists was not a only a mover and shaker  but also its mirror, and perhaps even its\nconscience..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\npapers do not only reveal Picasso in his search for dimension and scale but\nalso his exploration of his own attitudes and those of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picasso\nconstantly reinvented pieces of his work, re-contextualised them and placed\nthem in dialogue with other art forms particularly music, through works such as\nMan With A Guitar and of the mandolin that is the subject of Guy Clark\u00b4s song.\nIn Picasso And Paper you can see those works from conception to realisation and\nyet, perhaps, if Picasso were still alive he would be reinventing them all over\nagain. This exhibition reveals both his diligence and impatience as he\nconstantly seeks to explore and explain. We are compelled, as we view what the\nartist reveals and, too, what he conceals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed,\nWullschlager cautions us that \u00b4the line between beauty and monstrosity,\ndistortion and the illusion of a pictorial world, lies at the heart of Picasso.\u00b4\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guy\nClark\u00b4s song casts Picasso as carefree and heroic in his style. That is as\nmaybe but Picasso was much beyond being simply improvisational. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\ncollection reminds us that he was constantly questioning what he saw and how he\nrepresented it. Not only that but he identified process and completed statement\nin way that allowed him to articulate \u00b4the muse\u00b4 more clearly perhaps than any\nother artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wullschlager\nsuggests this collection introduces us (again?) to \u00b4a Picasso for now.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nartist\u00b4s early biographer, Roland Penrose, wrote that \u00b4Picasso draws as he\nthinks and as he lives. The whole drama of love, life and the inevitability of\ndeath are present.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Girl With Mandolin
Piccaso<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And yet it is over a hundred years since Picasso painted the mandolin that Texan songwriter Guy Clark celebrated in song. It was in 1910 that Picasso spent a summer holiday in Cadaqwuyes where he originated Girl With Mandolin. By now he was heavily involved with the Anlalytical Cubism that had evolved from his Cubist period and only the mandolin itself could be said to clearly identifiable in the piece. Indeed it is perhaps only the title that even clarifies an issue of gender but that doesn\u00b4t leave it devoid of realism in its strange portrayal of both motion and emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guy\nClark suggested in his lyric that Picasso believed \u00b4there ain\u00b4t no rule if you\ndon\u00b4t break it.\u00b4 Whether that means that Picasso And Paper proves him to be a\nfree spirit, willing to experiment in every which way or instead shows him to\nbe painter determined to circumnavigate a subject in all directions to ensure\nthat he show it at its correct best is irrelevant. That decision is for the viewer\nto make. Picasso, according to Guy Clark was, though, a fearless artist, \u00b4who\nlived in Spain and worked in France and was not afraid to wear baggy pants!\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeming\nto almost preview Picasso And Paper over the past couple of years has been Degas:\nA Passion For Perfection. The title alone tells us that there must be much to\ncompare and contrast when considering the attitudes these painters brought to\ntheir work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
a beach scene by Degas<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Degas once said \u00b4it is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, one hundred times\u00b4 which is advice that surely Picasso was following in creating his drafts, sketches and plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Degas died in September 1917, in his eighty-third year, after a career spanning\nover half a century, This exhibition was a celebration of his lifetime\u2019s\nachievement and showed a remarkable range of work that included paintings,\npastels, and prints of different types as well as drawings, watercolours,\nprints of different types, counterproofs and sculptures in bronze and wax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this reveals the artist\u00b4s fascination with technical\nexperimentation and constant drive to expand his means of expression. Arranged\nthematically, the exhibition highlights many of the subjects most prominent in\nDegas\u2019s work \u2013 nudes, caf\u00e9 scenes and the dance \u2013 as well as his individual\napproach to landscape painting. Degas\u2019s lifelong passion for learning from\nothers is revealed in a series of copies he made after works by Italian\nRenaissance artists and near-contemporaries such as J.A.D. Ingres and Eug\u00e8ne\nDelacroix. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an interesting comment on the evolution of the arts, though,\nthe exhibition included a final section examining Degas\u2019s artistic legacy in\nthe 20th and 21st centuries, notably in the work of Walter Sickert, Pablo\nPicasso, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Ryan Gander and Francis\nBacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition\ndrew substantially on the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the most\nextensive and representative in the UK. These were complemented by an\noutstanding group of around sixty loans from private and public collections\nthroughout Europe and the United States, several of which will be on public\ndisplay for the first time, and by a group of paintings and drawings once\nbelonging to the economist John Maynard Keynes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once\ndelivered a series of creative writing workshops using the works of Degas to\ninspire primary school classes to write expansively on what they saw in his\npaintings. One young lad, who will surely grow up to an art critic suggested\nthat on the artist\u00b4s Beach Scene smoke from the funnels on a distant ship was\napparently \u00b4blowing the wrong direction !\u00b4 I like a viewer prepared to have an\nargument, even if wrong, so I gave him a house-point, though I\u00b4m still not\ncertain he was right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Mrs. Lowry And Son
as played by Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another artist I constantly referred to in such classes was the world famous L S Lowry, although the late painter also remains firmly a working class hero for the North West of England. The theatre and arts centre named after him in Salford <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(https:\/\/thelowry.com\/whats-on\/ls-lowry-the-art-the-artist\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

houses a permanent exhibition selected\nfrom the world\u2019s largest\npublic collection of Lowry\u00b4s paintings and drawings these are displayed alongside\nother works on loan from private collections across the UK. Free 20 minute\ntours are given of the LS Lowry exhibition every day at 12pm and 2pm, and\ntaking a primary class around and asking them to speak \u00b4\u00ednstant rhymes\u00b4 about\nhis matchstick figures was always great fun. How many of those young children\nwe showed round more than thirty years ago might now go as adults to the cinema\nto see Mrs. Lowry And Son. the 2019 film starring Timothy Spall? And how many\nof them might then return to the Lowry Theatre and Exhibition Centre to see the\nactor\u00b4s version of Lowry work as created for that film?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lowry, Laurence Stephen; Our Town; Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service; http:\/\/www.artuk.org\/artworks\/our-town-90199<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, we are currently in the 175th year since the formation of The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, forerunners of The Co-operative Group. To mark this special year Touchstones Arts And Heritage Centre, which stands only a hundred yards from Toad Lane where that gathering first met, are delighted to put on a special display of three L.S. Lowry works. Two of these are owned by The Co-op – ‘Footbridge’ and ‘Cleator Moor’, alongside ‘Our Town’, a much loved painting within the borough’s own fine art collection.
During their stay in Rochdale, the works will also be taken out on ‘day trips’ to local schools and community venues. They will be on display until September. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PLAY IT ON PICASSO\u00b4S MANDOLIN Guy Clark\u00b4s Boats To Build album itself, when first released in 1982, caused me a great deal of confusion. I had always loved Guy\u00b4s songs of dust trails and freeways and of crazy characters and their complicated relationships but this album took me in directions I wasn\u00b4t then ready to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}