Reading Deleuze and stuff, I frequently get to a point of utter incomprehension. I see words, and related words, whole sentences, and can make no sensible connections. I read and read again, and progress is slow. It disappoints me to find myself in such a position with all that it implies of my mental faculties. And yet to be in this position is itself interesting. Sometimes my incomprehension seems so profound that all I have left is to smile at it. It is an experience of the sublime. I hope that coming to understand something is an evolutionary process; given appropriate experience, the light will turn itself on; understanding is not something that you do, but something that happens to you. So with the Cake as Art, I don’t know if there is anything sensible in it, or if it was simply a perverse thought on a particularly grumpy day. I continue to ponder on it; it is a little self destructive, maybe even a form of mental self-harming, in its potential for the ridiculous. But we have no power over our next thought until after it is born. In a sense I am trying out thoughts on the Cake, to see if they might make sense, to see what happens to me if I trust them to tell me something. Something totally unexpected might happen.
In a world of signs, where visual qualities seem to become irrelevant, the cake as signifier has a place. Its visual qualities drop away leaving a sign And paradoxically the visual qualities of the cake become the source of its being. The cake demands meaning. Its everyday social use is wrapped in its significance as cultural signifier; the cake becomes Art when the wrapping is exposed. In Asda today I made a point of looking. It is a visually harsh place, red and green in a visual clattering over the aisles, but as far as you can get from John Hoyland. The latest slogan is ‘Chosen by You’ signifying, ‘Do as The Label Tells You.’
Drawing this pigeon stretched me rather. From the beginning nothing seemed to go right. Line, tone, shape, everything that I did was clumsy, inexact, difficult. Couldn’t concentrate. Had been out on my bike, and I was more tired than I expected to be. Concentration involved disproportionate effort. I found myself compensating for poor observation with technical things; a bit of contrast and gesture goes a long way. In a sense I found myself making what I was doing appear as if it were a drawing. I was making feathery – birdy marks. And listening to Bluegrass. I’m no connoisseur, I just hear. Eventually I might listen. Drawing with Bluegrass in the background is one thing; with Blues another. I tend to be sucked into the rhythm. This drawing has evolved in the company of both. But it was a drawing, just the opposite kind of drawing to what I think I do – look at things, in the first place.
I read an obituary of John Hoyland today. I remember his show at the Whitechapel many years ago. Things stick in the mind – Red and Green – wedges of colour. Sad day.
Ouch!! Nothing more painful than a sharp stick in the pretensions! I went to two galleries yesterday, the Sainsbury Wing at the National gallery, and the Serpentine. Such different experiences. My splurge about the cake came about whilst I was drawing, and I wondered what was the difference between what I do and what Asda does, a wondering which may well not be indicative of anything other than a fairly benign madness indulged in whilst I while away the hours, drawing. There seems to be so much more to Asda’s cake than to work like mine. The sheer scale of it, the logistics of manufacture, distribution, advertising, the collaborative (?) nature of the whole venture. And as well, the cakes are silent presences in real lives. I’m wondering if I taste the cake in a manner similar to the way in which I experienced the Italian Altarpieces, or ‘The Mirror of Judgement.’ It is never possible to know enough. I read in the Serpentine Gallery booklet that on 2nd September Michelangelo Pistoletto ‘…will present a manifesto detailing how his work on time, form and everyday life is grounded in his ongoing study of ethics.’ Frightening! Contemporary commerce and contemporary art seem to inhabit a priestly aura in which they are guardians of the truth of transubstantiation. There was for me too much corrugated cardboard in Michelangelo Pistolotto’s installation, and too much ‘courtesy of the artist..’ and gallery names. The cardboard folds multiplied beyond need, as though the work must not waste the gallery. As with the cake, so with the corrugated card, there is a wish for less. Is it that what you SEE is more than what you get? All the time whilst I write this stuff, I feel a sense of irritation, and a resistance to things. Asda and Pistoletto feel like straitjackets, but a straitjacket I know of my own making. Being open to new experiences does not come easy.
Terms like ‘signifier’ can be a little like Pistolotto’s cardboard, and appear pretentious, but there seems to be a connection between myself and Mr Asda in the possibilities for signification through our respective products. The idea that it is art if you say it is art needs qualification. These arguments have been approached previously (who is qualified etc.?) Rather ,everything can be art insofar as its significance transcends its form. And yet a coherent case has to be made (piece by piece); the bald statement is wonderfully provocative but is only a beginning; some kind of priestly class is necessary. I don’t as yet ,and may never, understand Deleuze on attributes and definitions . (and I can’t find a reference to the source). Round and around in circles, I remain puzzled.
Two birds. One bird twice. Not birds at all. Drawings of a bird. Except that I remember on another blog (but not which one) a reference to drawings being not ‘of’ but ‘about’ something. It’s made me feel uncomfortable with regard to making drawings ‘of’ because it makes sense that representations are never simply ‘of’ their ostensible subject-matter, but necessarily involve engagement; the object cannot represent itself. I have this possibly irrational need for something which put crudely approximates to the idea of accuracy, which can never be satisfied, and which is where I think ‘of’ comes from. A line used to describe a boundary of some sort has to make sense in a boundary kind of way. And then there is the possibility of poetry of line. If the drawing is ‘of’ then the poetry is somehow accidental, or contingent. Or perhaps there is an insight of some other kind. Authenticity arises at the nerve endings, preverbally. All this mental fiddling around grows out of distrust, (or is it uncertainty?) which contributes to a chronic lack of equilibrium. For a long time I have lived in kind of fear of ‘contemporary’ art (I don’t wish to over-dramatise, it’s not like ‘real’ fear) for fundamentally egotistical reasons. I’m getting better.
Thinking about authenticity. I just ate a piece of cake. The label said that it was ‘Teatime Classic Walnut Cake -Soft Sponge with Walnut crunch, Layered with Smooth, Rich Buttercream’. It was sweet, soft, and bland. Designed not to cause offence, it may be a case of cake forgery. It looked remarkably like cake; what you SEE is what you get. We produce and consume appearances. I haven’t sorted out in my own mind the distinction between an ‘original’ an image, a copy, and a deception, and the nature of the experience that we have of each: maybe we touch all these things in all experiences. It seems something to do with authenticity. My reasons for suspecting the cake has to do with prior experiences, of other cakes and pleasures, against which I measure my cake experiences. My eating of the cake was a ‘real’ experience for me, but if the cake was a forgery, something designed to deceive , what am I really engaged in? I rather liked the idea that food might be ‘forged’. and then I remembered something about simulacra. It is a simulated cake? What distinguishes forgery from simulation? The lovely thing about simulation is the things that it has in common with the ‘real’ that it simulates. It is an honest deception. Forgery is a lie? I haven’t worked for several months now, for a variety of reasons, but I’m creeping up on it. It’s like a growing hunger. I want to squidge paint around on a canvas. The thought makes my mouth water. I’m just a little afraid of doing it for the sheer pleasure of it but I might just force myself. I’m beginning to see more clearly the position of the kind of stuff that I do in the grand design of things. If that seems a pretentious line, either it reveals pretentiousness, or maybe points to the connectedness, and disconnectedness between our everyday meanderings and a bigger picture. The cake cuts us off from a reality by offering a pretence of a ‘real’ experience. Authenticity as a copy?
