Author: bowlingatvincent

Ingerland – you must be joking.

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There are many precedents for hoofing England sides when they’re down; players and managers having frequently felt the pointy end of a brogue/doc marten/baseball boot/Manolo Blahnik (delete according to choice of accessories or date.) For those blessed with responsibility in the high profile sports – I’m thinking men’s football, rugby, cricket in the main here – judgement lurks cruelly close.

Currently one hypothesis, supported by hugely influential figures such as myself, suggests English football and rugby are still critically enmeshed in post-World Cup trauma; but that cricket is on a significant high. Capello and Johnson presided over such epically lurid debacles that their ability either to motivate or to proactively act seemed paralysed. In contrast, a certain Zimbabwean-born England and Wales cricket supremo has brought direction, unity, discipline and success to his side. Management, it appears, is massive. Perhaps especially when it makes comment superfluous?

Perceptions inevitably link results to the performance or authenticity of managers as well as players; thus Harry Redknapp, a ‘proper football bloke’, good former player and now demonstrably an inspiring coach is admired and respected precisely for the realness of his understanding of the game. Encouragingly, this implies judgements beyond mere (acknowledgements of) rates of success – a belief in genuine quality, no less. Would that we could sustain such generous worldviews.

Paralytically conversely, memorable custard pie-plus moments have surely included the tide of puss emanating from the tabloids towards the unfortunate Graham Taylor – a decent but not, arguably, a brilliant enough or sophisticated enough man to be at the helm of a national side generationally in skill-deficit rehab. Sven, McClaren and indeed now Capello have, on occasion, likewise felt most of the full force of press and public contempt. It –as they say –goes with the territory. Martin Johnson, whilst leaving, accepted that – almost nobly.

The fabulous diversity of opinion over teams we think represent us prevents the meaningful construction of a graph following median/mode/mental views of a particular manager’s status during office; there are, for example, wildly divergent views of Capello’s performance even when England have been cruising through qualification for the majors. (These range from the jingoistically buoyant to the cerebrally disturbed. Just when is he going to sort out Lampard/Gerard/Wilshere, Johnson/Walker?) Certainly the Capellograph would have to twitch alarmingly, as though reporting back from Etna rather than say, The Emirates.

Fabio, like a whole host of previous incumbents, may be in the process of being reconstructed by fluky inheritance. Recent friendlies against Spain (where they were outclassed but won) and Sweden (where they showed little but won) have thrown up sparks. Whether Phil Jones manages to continue to make absurdly serene progress towards a central place (literally?) in the England side whilst shouldering Duncan Edward’s comparisons may now be influential. Whether the likes of Rodwell/Walker/Wellbeck, through a kind of swifter natural expression of their talents come to Capello and England’s rescue may be… influential. The truth is, Capello has found them chiefly/only after

a) injuries to seniors

b) depressing performances by seniors.

My last word on the Italian is that having presided over such a shocking World Cup, having failed utterly to inspire or change a visibly desperate side, he should have been gone.

Martin Johnson has. With that familiar mixture of churlishness, largeness, restrained vitriol and … almost some emotion, he jumped the ferry before being escorted down the plank. England RUFC, having hugely overachieved at the previous World Cup under a player-undermined manager, appointed Johnson hoping for quiet, broodingly Churchillian leadership. He couldn’t do it. In his absence, there now ensues a near-interesting and even mysterious phase of non-appointment, featuring a non-Mallett but lots of clattering in the background. As with the football scenario, a sea-change in direction as well as personnel may trip or bumble towards us, either obstructed or otherwise by the RFU furniture. But given that Shaun Edwards has stayed righteously in Wales, it seems too much to hope for radical improvement.

It may be, therefore, seasonally unfortunate for all of us that we are denied much-needed sporting cheer due to a current lack of England cricket -that being by some distance our most upliftingly successful game. Suddenly, it seems, we have a worryingly stable and consistent crop of outstanding players. And a generally brilliant team ethic. This has not happened entirely by chance – although the contemporaneous emergence of top individuals (Strauss, Cook, Trott, Swann, Anderson…) clearly helps, cool and authoritative leadership off the pitch has been critical. To the point where the following notion bounces in.

Surely numbers stricken by Seasonally Affected Disorder could have been hugely reduced by heart-warming exposure to the further exploits of Strauss , Cook et al this winter? Contemptuously tonking all-comers at Test Level would plainly be markedly beneficial to the national psyche so, why on earth did the government fail to act on this? Couldn’t somebody have rigged up a few Tests/few big screens in shopping malls and…

Back to cool and authoritative. At a time when crises of management or certainly leadership run rampant over our whole lives(!) some contemplation of what works might seem appropriate.  (A yes for cricket, no and no for footie/rugby.) But, sporting opinion and contemplation being mutually exclusive, maybe I’ll bawl with the rest of them… Just who is running this ship, anyhow?

Edwards

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Edwards… Edwards to Barry John… Edwards the Baabaa, diving over… Edwards again, in his own right (Shaun, I mean!) at the vortex of another monster hit. TOUCH PAUSE CONTRACT -ENGAGE; not with Twickers, as feared and imagined but with and by Wales-in-my-arms. A kind of poetic justice. In the now buffering pantheon of Welsh rugby Edwards will remain a name to conjure memories and expectations – dreams even. Only the current version is, as half the world knows, a bullish English Skinhead with attitude plus.

Certainly The Province (yuk) is dreaming again. Now that the bristlingly brilliant defensive guru has shaken on the deal to keep him in Wales – or at least primarily working here until after the 2015 World Cup – the excitement rumbles on. After a World Cup hugely enriched by Welsh verve and spirit, this medium-sized signature richly supercedes the limitations of mere contract; it is, alleluyah, a sign.

A sign of the following

  • that Edwards has understandably been Touched by the feeling that there’s something exciting (and honest and true?) about how Wales are developing
  • that he understands and feels (surely) the coaching triumvirate of Gatland Edwards Howley are casting something of a spell
  • that a competitive or even gallivanting Welsh side is massively good for the world game
  • that clearly the current crop of players – Warburton/Faletau/Roberts/North/Halfpenny perhaps most obviously – are young men of some considerable talent
  • that maybe he fears England may remain in a constipated Crouch?
  • that of the combination of factors – money/challenge/enjoyment/hwyl? – the most significant point straightforwardly back to Cardiff.

Many of us view this as a near-mushy triumph for Love over Money. (We know it’s not that simple but please allow our indulgence; it’s kindof refreshing.) For here the obvious antagonism between Wales and England has been simply slam-dunked by (it is felt) a kind of big-hearted loyalty to real rugby. Twickers with its pen-pushers, snobs, embarrassment of riches but disgracefully poor and cynical expression of the game has been snubbed righteously by the boy Edwards; who sounds Welsh. Who understands – as did the world – that the sport’s richness derives chiefly from doing brave, comradely stuff quickly and with flair. That’s how it seems from Tredegar/Tywyn/Ty Ddewi.

Welsh rugby has manifestly taken big strides forward of late. If, as now seems likely, the coaching set-up – which we can only imagine is enjoyed, largely, by the players – now looks forward to a stable period of further development, then lookout boys. But there are no guarantees. I even see England as a major threat going forward – if they ever do. For now though, the Brotherhood of Reds is pumping claret; proudly.

Let us know, people

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I know it’s something of a minority pastime but I’m gently, distractedly, coolly fixated on the England Manager Thing. And whilst I have – when prompted – plenty to say about S. Capello, I’m not talking footie.

Rugby; that magnificent drunk-with-honour but recently wreckless bundle; the one where real blokes dismember each other then hug. Though the World Cup may have peeled away some of our romantic certainties, it remains clear I hope that top level rugby reaches the places football, for example, dare not pretend to. Extreme physicality without too many grudges; utter selflessness and routine courage; obedience and generally even respect for the ref. These feel important in a world where international footballers routinely dive or fake contact and shockingly berate the call of authority. (I say this in full knowledge of the weakness of the inferred link between two massively different games and the obviousness of these dubious comparisons. And I grew up in a football household.)

So let’s not pretend things are perfect with rugby. Verbals have increased; behaviour is more prima donna-like; sensitivity/decency failure seems to have become an issue, most famously and recently within the England camp in particular. In this context, the reported £25,000 fine for Tindall is a sharpish riposte to creeping naughtiness and one which perhaps we should applaud – if only for the momentary relief it may provide for the RFU hierarchy, who must surely, finally, urgently be working their sweat-tingled socks off to gain control of a) the game b) the England side c) public perception of same.

Though I cannot condone the ‘antics’ of Messrs Tindall/Ashton/Tuilagi etc. – they provided an appropriately depressing ground for the drab watercolours that were English performances at the Rugby World Cup – the sense is of minor distractions snowballing. In terms of performance and image, players presumably let relatively loose let their team down. However – mighty big ‘if’ enter stage left – IF England had performed with flair and imagination and success, how many punters might be smiling at say, Tuilagi’s youthful exuberance? (I did anyway.) In reality crap ‘behaviour’ settled quite nicely against crap performances in the games’ psyche and its profile. I personally am more offended by the nature of the rugby England played than the alleged general malaise in conduct; although it’s close.

England Rugby is in a mess. Despite huge resources every which way and a deepish pool of talent we need look no further than the word embarrassing to describe performance levels – arguably not just at the World Cup. I have been and will remain critical of Martin Johnson – as long as I’m out of earshot. He was a totem, a titan, a tower and a coolly fearsome opponent as a player but as a manager he has, in the modern idiom, sucked. (Am I still out of earshot?) There has been a consistent chronic lack of direction and inspiration on the pitch. Aware, authoritative and yes inspirational managers would have addressed this, either with a hairdryer, or a quiet word, or some Churchillian rhetoric. Instead it’s rumbled on, this infectious lack, this fumble.

Contrast this with the recent Welsh resurgence. When it mattered, Gatland, Edwards and Howley had their posse fizzing happily and with just the right mixture of aggression and liberated zeal. Rarely has the full expression of collective talent seemed so uplifting. It felt like the game itself joined in with the dynamic swell as Warburton’s (should that be The Coaches?) Mob railed unquietly towards the People’s Final. ‘Til something intervened. We can be sure that a good deal of good management played a vital part in the Welsh enterprise – enterprise in every sense. Disappointingly the concomitant paucity and tightness of the English game has to be laid at Johnson’s door, along with Ford/Rowntree etc.

Only those privileged to have been close to the poop-spraying equipment may truly know which of the coaches deserve to remain, finger on fan. Excuse the further malodorous pun but I suspect a major clear-out may be in order. And yet we wait. We speculate. Those of us in Wales (I think) generally fear the announcement that Edwards has deserted, believing passionately that the GEH triumvirate had something special in the offing. (Shaun, I know you’re listening, STAY AND ENJOY THE FUN! They won’t understand you!! They won’t let you be you!!) Those in England presumably wonder what kind of combination will lie ahead.

I’ve wrestled with the Possibles. Without NOTW style surveillance, it’s difficult to know which of the following have been seriously or serially canvassed. Nick Mallett/Jim Mallender/Graham Henry/Shaun Edwards/Clive Woodward/A N Other/ Me? As already covered under A Poisoned Flagon, I’m going for a combination featuring Edwards and I know not who.

But what about the skipper? Harlequins captain Chris Robshaw has hurtled into Possibles-plus type profile, having been touted convincingly by the likes of Phil Vickery. A new management team, culling fearlessly would increase the scope and likelihood for all manner of changes, perhaps even including inviting young Mr Lawes to step forward. But is that as fanciful as imagining Ben Foden as skipper? In other words… it’s still messy. So I’d just like to know now please; just like to feel like something’s been sorted. Know what I mean?

What is it with us blokes?

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My son is expending a huge amount of energy on being cool/being in; being safely ensconced in the little mob. I understand that. The not particularly appealing truth is that compound pressures – shockingly cheap ones – insist that as a young bloke (at school) you have to avoid the perception of ‘gay stuff’. So if you are ‘bright’ – and what a loaded word that baby is – or in some other way may be seen or suspected to be spookily other to the durable surfy or sporty norm, you have to do stuff. Chiefly, you have to trip other blokes up and laugh, or wrestle, or join in the chorus of grunts aimed at individuals who either fail the informal Cool Exams, or who appear immune to the essential trends, poor dumbo’s. It really can be a jungle; a jungle with fringes you have to casually flick.

So, barring haircuts/degree of undies exposure things apparently haven’t changed much since I was a kid. I kindof oscillated between being something of a little mob leader and teetering on the brink of gaydom. Because I was almost painfully skinny and brainy; because I was (thank god) bloody good at sports; because I made the guys laugh. Otherwise who knows? I saw very little overt physical bullying and guess that remains at similar levels – again, who knows? I am pretty sure, however that pressures to have the right clobber and do the right things have multiplied as awarenesses of products (as much as anything) have exploded. I suspect there’s a lot of quiet heartbreak going on.

The fact that much of this is centred upon a brutally stupid contrast between fashionable conformities and individual expressions of self make it all the more deplorable, all the more poignant. For cheap macho values to have taken such a hold so early is massively harmful. But it has, I’m seeing it every day. (I repeat) The black and white of it for me was that

a) because I could only dream of being ‘wiry’

b) because I kept coming top

c) because I actually could sound a bit French in French

I apparently deserved to die a slow painful death. Unless the following qualities intervened in my favour;

d) I was the fastest

e) I was tasty on the footie/rugby/cricket pitch

f) (unbelievably) I was kinda… funny.

Intervene they did, largely.

My schooldays, like my sons, were generally good. In fact – and this may be unflatteringly contradictory – I am clear that the ‘ordinariness’ of my education (at Matthew Humberstone Comp. Cleethorpes, if you must know) was the making of me in many positive ways. Ways that I actually cherish. I literally grew up with guys (mainly) who aren’t now reading The Guardian. They are in workshops/on ships/in difficulty as well as in schools or offices. Some were academically ‘hopeless’ but on a sports pitch they were transformed from footie hooligans to bundles of skill and expression – of intelligence even. Such is the roughness of the macho diamond; would that we could dig it from the dungheap.

So what do we do, as parents, as blokes? I have laboured the point to both my kids that everyone must be valued. That this is paramount. I have forewarned my son – wrongly perhaps – that he has nothing to fear (in being brainy) because he is a good honest, sporty lad, insulated from meaningless grief through his ability to clump people on the rugby pitch and smash cover drives. How much more satisfactory would it be to be able to say nowt, or feel comfortable that he could be fearlessly weedy/geeky/gay as he liked, if he needed to be.

Family Fortunes?

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My dad was a great bloke whose default position for people/things that offended him, politically or morally, was to intone only mildly passionately that they should be stood up against the wall and shot. Given that he was a generous lump – six feet, fifteen stone – that may make him a sound like some rather intimidating Northern Philistine, coming as he did from Macclesfield. But though he certainly possessed that particular ability to glory in dumb-honest normalcy – a trait I am kindof proud to continue – he was Top Five when it came to harmlessness, straightness, generosity. There was not an ounce of violence within him.

I mention this because I can’t help but think of this entirely hollow threat to shoot some sharply defined perpetrator in relation to Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s aide/doctor/pharmacist; (you decide).

Murray would have been a candidate for the blindfold stagger, one might imagine. Hugely rich (by our standards), almost certainly conceited, professionally lazy, negligent. Arguably a parasite, arguably one of many attached to the shockingly lost pop superstar. Murray, according to reports that I haven’t bothered to check (because I am happier skimming the surface of this depressing episode) drew about 100 grand a month for his attention to Mr Jackson; this for the privilege of pretty much 24 hour drug provision. Issues thereafter become foggy, due to the very real questions around medical need as opposed to recreational use of said drugs. If there is or was an opposition.

My dad would, in his weirdly un-hip way, have loved some of Jackson’s music and even his dancing, despite the chasm of divergent realities separating MJ from Keith Winston Walton (who also died criminally young). This is perhaps one of Jackson’s triumphs – his ability to entrap much of the planet in his moonwalking, hip-twitching genius. Post 78’s Pater could no more sing or dance than imagine a blackberry but there was something Jackson had that was, for a time genuinely thrilling – revolutionary even – as well as hummable. The appallingly high-profile denudation of this gift troubled most of us at some level; it made some of us embarrassed, some angry, some sad to see the unassailable King Of Pop contort and crumble into the later model. But whose fault was it?

Murray put himself in the firing line through a combination of greed and slackness rather than evil in my view. The screaming, high-fiving, JUSTICE placard-wielding fans and family members who cheered and celebrated his conviction, enacting their champagne emotions just like they imagine real celebrities might, were depressingly appropriate players in the malodorous panto. It was America at its shrillest. No matter, no sense that Jackson drifted on some ark cobbled together in a crazy mountain kingdom and then smashed his way down hanging valleys to a limpid, medically-regulated pool, collecting kids, hangers-on and increasingly harrowing constructions of self on the awful journey. No matter that all this love for him melted away the closer you got. Murray was therefore and without question – on some merit, in fact -a burnished receptacle for blame.

Jackson’s family life -the stuff that would ordinarily be called ‘home life’ – has been heavily documented. It might be uncharitable to suggest that his family remains exhibit A in the case against singling out Murray but… where else do we need to go? It seems to be true that nobody cared enough for Michael to either guide, counsel or over-rule him. And the consequence was fatal indulgence, compounded by poor service from his private Drugs-on Wheels service. Could it be true that nobody cared? Is that what the evidence suggests? Who do we blame?

I blame lack of attention, lack of love, lack of intelligence, lack of moral fibre. I blame celebrities, I blame hangers-on and I blame American Culture (coming over here). And my dad says that they should all be stood up against the wall… and shot.

An inflammation

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LET THE MAD AND MAGNIFICENT ENERGY OF THE FUTURISTS and their ludicrously wonderful manifesto be an inspiration at this cusp of deathly inertia and foaming revelation.

Let the staccato totems and the tents and the firefly proclamations of the Occupiers and the rebellious jukeboxes and the childlike believers pitchfork those who bank on banking and this dead god of economic growth.

Let the obscenity that is market force be seen for the cheap fraud it is.

Let the conversation begin again, led by dancer-poets not lobbyists.

After Marinetti, we purr like coiled cats over the paralytic mouse that is The Market. We do not accept the pre-eminence of privilege or masculine entrepreneurship.We pogo through the doors in the lifeless boardrooms of the spineless business of truculent cash.

We, with our pumping hearts revolt against the black death of normalcy; with honour, with real sense, with a hearty handshake.

Let the good incendiaries come. We have our eleven; we count with our innumerate hearts and choose to throw coins in the fountain.

We are rising with the colours of ecstatic belief. We deny the cynicism, the ineptitude and the unambition of the normal. You the normal must change; we are changing.

So we say

1. The people have been lied to and will undo the lies… so lie no more.

2. Democracy is a fraud where privilege is bought – at private schools; by sponsorship; by ‘influence’.

3. We will usurp the machismo-heads, the infertile parliamentary fools – those who feel not our great debates, the goodness of our humour, the freedom of our thoughts.

4. We will teach them that ‘growth’ is not necessary, planning is necessary…

5. That the aim of business is not to maximise profit, it is to make enough…

6. That the aim of life is not to idly stockpile money – it is to express the fullness of the human heart…

7. And that the business of government is not to fawn before business, it is to lead, magnificently.

8. Creativity must rule because only generosity sustains; dancers and poets must therefore lead us! ( Not Sarkozy/Merkel/Cameron! They are working for Barclays! They are yesterday’s men!)

9. Women will let us talk.

10. We will learn again that work can be good; work can be good for all of us.

11. And we must learn again… to engage with the need to transform.

Standing on the world’s summit, we launch our aspiration to the stars.

A poisoned flagon?

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L

I have heard, in the last few moments that there are now 2 live inquiries into the England Rugby World Cup fiasco and one dead one. (Fran Cotton is presumably grazing his four cabbages this morning with stoic indifference, having feared or expected further administrative chaos). “Cock-up – again” I hear him saying. Thus the last word kindof becomes the first?

                                    

Any time now he will get the nod. Probably initially in airless private but soon mindlessly beaming members of an alleged hierarchy will be chivvying him towards the public, grey but humming hotseat. Thus the All New England Rugby Manager will meet the press; meet us plebs.

There will no doubt follow a platitude-fest of second row proportions. Eventually, once even the journalists are bored of hearing the flawless laundry that is Managerstuff rinse and repeat relentlessly, the hierarchy (yet to be announced) will commit further overfamiliar but nonetheless profoundly inept acts of ushering to get their man out to a waiting bar – I mean car. Safely ensconced in the back of this dark but bland executive vehicle he will breathe deeply – very deeply – and then consider what the fuck he has done… as, no doubt, will the ushers.

In this rare moment of privacy The All New England Manager may reconsider his options whilst leafing through a dossier on the current playing staff, material that is unlikely to energise the soul but may – if the mood were lighter – provide a few laffs. What could be funnier than a royal wedding failure/a humiliated chambermaid/a swallow dive off a ferry? (Okay, I think the latter was mildly amusing and Tuilagi’s undeniable talent insulates him from further unnecessary flak. But the list of positives from – appropriately? – the WC is surely hysterically brief?) Of the 153,276 words featured in the review imagined by my good self, ‘crushing’, ‘boring’ and ‘he constitutes another loose cannon’ are statistically prevalent. Sensing this, the staff driver (I picture a Devonian prop with tractor driver’s sideburns and a whimsical nature) at this point knowingly produces a hip-flask and a wink. “Wait ’til you get to page 3 boss”.

On page 3 there is a discussion on the Captaincy Issue which may or may not suggest that Mad Dog Wilkinson is still considered a suitable force for er… English crypto-buddhist wholesomeness. Oh, and the captaincy. Only slightly more surprising is the revelation that the hierarchy are also looking at the following as live candidates for the role;

Andy Ripley; Fay Weldon; Julian Barnes; Mahatma Ghandi.

The driver’s eyebrows have arched.

But we, in our frothy excitement, get ahead of ourselves. Who will be choosing the captain? Woodward? Mallender? Henry? Or can talk of Johnson’s survival be right? Given that pretty immediately prior to this All New Captain thing the over-riding impulse of the (yet to be announced) hierarchy would certainly have been to find a Manager who will be a safe pair of hands whilst the team is (again) ‘in transition’, we might reasonably fear exposure to a worryingly imaginative choice scenario. In other words, a foreigner. Assuming Martin Johnson is jettisoned – on merit – the pool of realistic candidates (my cheap jibes notwithstanding) would need to include those of a Tri-Nation persuasion, surely?

Unless there’s a fait accompli favouring somebody like Clive Woodward? Or is it ludicrous to wonder if Henry has been tapped up with some elder statesman role in mind… with Shaun Edwards as enforcer? Fanciful but interesting? Gadzooks! Could English rugby turn out interesting? Contemplation of that question makes me return to the thought – already expressed in certain papers – that Martin Johnson will stay in post. This is such a laughable proposition that it fits almost perfectly the mould – giant-sized cock-up revisited.

Cream

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I imagine that in the Relatively Profound Dinner-Table Chat Olympics (being hosted all over, currently) there is an argument for the following 3 top players collaring the airtime and the awards; redundancy; waste; indulgence. Depressing perhaps, given that they are playing a similar, limited game. But talk about art might surely invoke discussion XXXVII(b) on the redundancy of painting as easily as debate over jobs lost say… in the theatre. Talk about opportunity leads to talk about waste and talk about everything from MP’S expenses to conceptual art draws us into a vortex of indulgences. Followed by something with cream.

I am happy to report that I

a) never get invited to dinner parties and

b) have always been able to deny the encroachment of virtually any kind of cynicism because of a ludicrous faith in the creativity/sincerity of people – often individually but sometimes as a group, ‘type’, band or mob.

If caught at some dizzying glacial precipice I really would throw myself off in the confidence that songs featuring Jerry Dammers/Elvis Costello/John Lydon/Tom Waits/Howard Devoto/Radiohead really would carry me off somewhere safe and then somewhere special. If about to be battered in a Catalunyan alley I really would confidently explete a surreal but beautiful cloak of words in the manner of that greatest of locals Joan Miro, turning the brute anger of the assailing docker into beery but easy fraternity. These crazy things I believe in.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not I promise you generally fawn before art or artists – how could I/we, since John Lydon magnificently forbade it? (Metal Box etc etc.) On the contrary, I am loaded with judgemental phlegm for the fakers and the impostors; and if I don’t believe you… duck. However I have learnt (and am learning) that it is essential to really attend when art coughs and stands up before me. Especially when that art lacks figurative clues.

Most recently I/we combined a long weekend in Cornwall with an admittedly rather tourist-paced visit to Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth museum. (I recommend both). It would be disingenuous of me, however, to exclude mention of the fact that the stated aim of the visit was actually to come back from the British Surfing Association Championships at Newquay with a physically and emotionally undamaged son – he came 6th, spluttering slightly on regurgitation from monstrous surf, so this principal aim was achieved. And therefore my 2 hours in the Tate were a bonus and a fairly cerebral treat.

I say cerebral because the current exhibition – The Indiscipline of Painting / International abstraction from the 1960’s to now – provides a healthy challenge; (it)

reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provide ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

(Tate guide.)

You the viewer are invited to make the links; it’s pretty necessary to engage with material outside of the paintings – or through them. Accessibility and mere beauty are not paramount. New ‘disciplines’ – referencing/equivalence/the exposition of new meanings – fight their way out of the sack, or stutter and print from the digital age.

In the brief entree to the exhibition, quoted above, the word ‘problematic’ is quite rightly used to describe the state of abstract painting now. We could argue long and hard about when the first abstract paintings emerged – Turner(!), Kandinsky, Kupka, Picabia? – but we can be clear that the probing and stretching continues, decades on. The selections at Tate St Ives, by British painter Daniel Sturgis, effectively span the last fifty years and include works by 49 western artists, including Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and Gerhard Richter.

In Gallery 1 the search for new meanings – this kinetic charge to expand upon the known- is immediately and disparately evident. Michael Craig-Martin’s “Mirror Painting,” in which a mirror bisects the work, morphing red lines into black and vice-versa, cutely, sharply (and literally?) asks us ‘Where is the real?’ Imi Knoebel more confrontationally dumps or places stuff, in a clear challenge or rejection of what… artfulness? We might need to pause and reflect on deeper possibilities to get into “Black square on a buffet”. It is speaking a very different language.  We may have to work to learn it.

David Diao references 3 traceable but obscure sources; sources he knows the ‘average viewer’ might never uncover… without help from the curator. Gerhard Richter’s “2 Greys Juxtaposed” seems both an homage and an exercise in classical diptych painting about the possibilities of abstract space and depth without texture. (Does that make it dated?) Martin Barre’s “Spray Paint on Canvas” is exactly that; marks leaving a canvas, leaving us with a trace, a gesture.

These are very different responses to questions about legitimacy – about what is truest now/how that is expressed. If there is a theme of transitionality (or is that just a feeling?), if there is a conflict over avoiding ‘self-expression’ and finding or alluding to something ego-less and necessarily greater then so be it; let the broad church explode with ideas, with divergent truths. We are all abstract artists making choices and if, as the commentary suggests

                 The way paintings are made holds meanings

a central question then, might be this; if abstraction is utterly logical and necessary, how do we make it work now?

Gallery 2 is an extraordinary space. (I heroically limited myself to just a very few minutes transfixed by the epic views of epic surf and Lowryesque
dudes on screaming boards.) There is a Frank Stella here – competing for attention – colourfully and bewilderingly titled “Hyena Stomp”. My distracted notes describe it as a ‘ruptured, kaleidoscopic time-tunnel’ and that, 2 days later, seems fair. Andre Cadere’s “Round bar of Wood” is a painted stave or ornamental stick, an equivalent that has escaped canvas entirely, whilst Blinky Palermo’s “Untitled” consists of a canvas wrapped in green/blue cloth-horizons, moodily. Is there a hierarchy, you might ask, in all this breadth? (Why would there be?) (You judge).

The strength of the show is the scope of the show. There is an academic brief here, sure, but the art chatters so colourfully about individual as well as multi-layered or even universal issues that maybe my earlier dinner party allusion was spookily helpful.  And on the guest list… Tim Head; ask him exactly whom/what he is referencing in “Continuous Electronic Surveillance”. Tell him there’s something strangely attractive about it that you don’t understand.

Likewise perhaps you could slide briefly – apologetically – into Dan Walsh’s personal space to mutter charmingly that you found the colour, the pattern, the aboriginal geometry of “Auditorium” beautiful.  He might stifle a splutter but he might knock back his cocktail re-energised. And perhaps you could disarmingly slap Francis Baudevin on the shoulder whilst asking how on earth we, the average viewer could know that the flat but three dimensional triangles in the pictogram of 2011 protest issues around CO2 emissions?  Does the artist need to… I mean, how obtuse is that?

Except on reflection the triangles look like volcanoes… and the title is… oh… an Icelandic volcano. That volcano. So perhaps it does make a kind of sense?  Ah.

Just kill the bastard?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I have (once I think?) boasted of the time when Hampstead Theatre described me as a Free-wheeling Absurdist, a description I have been tempted to put in the ‘Occupation’ column of my passport. This F w A thing implies, I imagine, a fair dose of woolly anarchism. Shockingly, it may also be that I have signed off the odd punkily pompous letter with the phrase (‘Yours, The) Rebellious Jukebox’ so as to bask in reflected but beery glory from Mark E Smith, a hero of mine. I have, in other words, an inclination towards the subversion of the monochrome, the traditional, the conservative. And yet…

And yet I am traditional as they come in some ways. Forgive the self-obsession but I am (for example) genuinely finding it difficult to reconcile my teeth-baring discomfort with poorly expressed authority – the Old Bill, maybe – and my anger-loaded queasiness over what’s recently been called, pretty fairly, The Gadaffi Gore-Fest. The exercise of law; post or during riots; post or during revolutions. Law at Peak Times, when we surely need to be bringing out ‘civilisation’s’ A Game. Look we’ve dug in deeply very early here; let’s take a breath and get specific.

Libya. How wonderful that a tyrant is overthrown. We can surely understand the foamy excitement at the edge of this surge, this people’s revolt. We can likewise have some sympathy for those families or individuals feeling justified in biting or booting the figure who so terribly and cynically and carelessly masticated (or worse) upon their fortunes. When a brutal leader falls, is it not inevitable that heavy boots feature, in a more or less lurid dance of celebration?

This may be the likelihood. But forgive the neighing of my high horse as I beg to differ with the essence of such an argument. Clearly in the Libyan case a kind of agitated but almost funky indiscipline has been characteristic of the stagger towards ‘freedom’. The rebels (whom I certainly don’t mean to generally criticise) have had a cause alright, but have only been able to advance it following irregular but critical dollops of unanswerable violence provided chiefly by Western airpower. The strategy has then been to go like hell and mop up round the craters. Presumably there has been some co-ordination with the French or U.S. Air Forces but a phrase like ‘hearty’ or even ‘heroic endeavour’ probably characterises the rebel effort better than a phrase like ‘drilled regiments’. Again, this is no complaint; it is merely a way in to describing the difficulties that have arisen once order (yawn), that singularly unattractive concept to the broiling masses, becomes unavoidably necessary.

People clearly needed to be working on the Who’ll Be in Charge question some weeks ago – and maybe they were. But it is more than just a disappointment that in the event of Gadaffi’s capture in the place he was arguably most likely to be, things descended into the aforementioned gore-fest pretty quickly. Clearly much of that would be down to those who were in the immediate vicinity of the man himself. Whether, realistically they could have been primed to deliver a live prisoner for due process is doubtful; they were not, after all, soldiers. However, given that some time did elapse – time enough for tawdry or cheesy or criminal use of mobile phone cameras – before some decision was made to move the body, I wonder if some individual with some authority might ideally have intervened.

Because this was an important time. Imagine what a profound and positive – not to say enlightening moment –might have been captured if Gadaffi had been arrested and treated with dignity. Rednecks the world over would have been choking on their burgers. Other Arab Springers would have surely felt a poignant truth land softly in their palms; a gift which when twittered or beamed abroad might even bestow a kind of credence to Arab Springness itself. A moment of calm or foresight or decency or discipline and the way Africans/Arabs are perceived in the West really might have been positively shifted. That has an importance beyond the wonderful precedent of an absolute bastard being tried not butchered by the people he kept down so heartlessly.

Instead the gore-fest wins out. Papers are sold, the web is cruised. Revenge is sweet. But let’s consider, in the common knowledge that Gadaffi was a despicable and possibly unhinged character, whether it could be still be right, by that or any other storm drain, to answer “Just kill him” to the question “What do we do now?”

Or are we all better served by taking a breath, a moment, before reading him his rights? How long – to be blunt – are we going to judge vengeance to be some kind of justice? It is not justice and it demeans us all.

France can’t win because…

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It’s the finalist of all finals, the most singularly lopsided. The homesters versus the recently unloved; the latter, (the French) having excelled themselves at the fine art of pretending to be England, minus the booze, the women (probably) and the ferries. Is there even a sort of Daily Mailized Forces of Order and Good v Dale Farm Junkies and Dishonourable Reprobates about it too, I wonder? The fearsomely beautiful and no doubt milky-lamb-cuddling ‘Blacks v the foie gras munching bootboys with no respect. With press this bad, surely even the French don’t want France to win? But could they?

The answer is a relatively confident No. And given that time is now short and that once more it feels appropriate to spill the guts of an argument rather than tease it out surgeon-like, here are a few reasons to be fearful for the French.

  • They’re outgunned in every department, pretty much, lacking the blistering intensity levels the All Blacks have copyrighted as their own since… since Agincourt. (Where’s the French Nonu or McCaw or Dagg? Etc.)
  • The All Blacks, in case it’s slipped you’re notice, are at home, with the heat of a nation – a truly great rugby nation – scorching at their backs.
  • Though we might expect a few nervous moments, a chronic and infectious bout of under-achievement should not blight the All Blacks, or enough of the All Blacks for long enough, to give the French a look-in.
  • If on the contrary the AB’s start as they did against Australia, the French capacity to sulk and even disappear may be invoked by about the 15th minute; because the cause may already be lost.
  • Whilst the French pack may be reasonably competitive in the scrum (maybe) they will surely not live with the AB’s at the line-out/breakdown/generally marauding round the park?
  • Perhaps Harinordoquy and Dusautoir aside, the French lack the crucial combination of real class and spirit. And they are relatively faceless behind the scrum.
  • Israel Dagg, I fancy, may have a field day whilst opposite number Medard is likely to wilt.
  • Whilst 9 and 10 are not special for the AB’s, they are functioning and brilliantly supported by the midfield and by loose forwards. Yashvilli and Parra have had nothing around them except chaos.
  • Most obviously perhaps the difference in belief and unity should tell; the Blacks are mighty and together and they know it; the French are cock-fighting or backing different snails.
  • Lievremont is enigmatically unloved; Henry is the Headteacher worth listening to.

Most important of all, dear reader, we the World Community of Rugby Lovers simply won’t allow it (a French win, I mean).

  • Because without any doubt the All Blacks – the New Zealanders – are fine and even magnificent exponents of and believers in rugby as an electrifying, honourable pursuit.
  • Because they will give EVERYTHING and truly, sadly, the French have given virtually nothing (and arguably therefore, have no right to represent the North. That honour should surely have ideally fallen to the Brotherhood of Redness – see 57 previous blogs).
  • Because, in other words, put crudely but honestly, the All Blacks deserve it. And we will congratulate them.