Newest post: still really rubbish : An Ode To Orwell Down and Out in London 2011

Sub-Title - Living in The Cameroon.


This is going to be a summary.  Of life living on the bread-line (The non-granary type without surplus seeds)
Simple, good, wholemeal, nearly harking back to a simpler time of agricultural whimsy.   To be 'pro-white' might be cache as a bit strong on the far-right nowadays, so I refer to the guardian ideal of 'Whole-Meal' that mysterious mix of ethnic wheat groups.

Seedy.

 - - -  - - - - An aside - there are pigeons - birds - who eat better bread than I do in London.  I have opened up a lunch treat to the ridicule of a pack of pigeons before.  I imagine that 'Pesto' is currently topping the pigeon sons' name charts for 2011.   Anyway, pure flights of fancy. - - - -

It's going to be boring.

As euphemisms go- 'seedy' actually infers a quite posh sub-genre of a loaf nowadays...although 'wholemeal' again has insinuations that are far too ambitious for any type of bread/sandwich- having not counted as a 'whole-meal' since the war.  Nevertheless, Heaven thanks we can allude to that rather than a baguette baring in mind the latest Euro-chat.

Back to the Guide' :

1. Being poor in London.

A-Walking.  (ie. Not taking a bus or a tube.  Or a taxi, obviously.  I think it's fair to say you're allowed 1 runner from a black cab in your life.  The vomit-smelling whiff running-through your hair as you run to a distant alleyway to meet that man of your dreams...might conjure up a nineties MTV video in your head, but alas YOU are a metropolitan policeman's dream)
(I add, that I have actually taken a black cab from Nottingham to Dorset, but that was before I was poor, so doesn't count. )

So POOR walk.  Frequently.  Belonging to realm of logic where a walk from Richmond to the East-End seems feasible as long as you have your stoicism.  The shirpas of the mighty Himalayas are him-a-lay-abouts who quite pale in comparison. 

Scott Fitz

B-Nouveau-Socialism.
Seriously contemplating a periodic time in a tent at that Butlins-on-St-Pauls for a while.  It might be more feasible than joining the priesthood (who interestingly have free board in central london) and it's just great for transport links.   After all, you know a few 'anarchists/socialists/squatters' and they are not so bad at all. If a bit deluded and annoying.  The anarchists smell a bit more than the socialists, who hold serious 'high-ideals' - in that they would use soap as opposed to the anarchists who wouldn't.  And the squatters have no showers, and just turn up at various parties, or places hitherto unpolitical upon their 'soap-boxes'.  These are very metaphorical soap-boxes.  Empty soap-boxes.

C-Job Centres :  (Now a POTENTIALLY trendy market stall area??? )
Ahh, they say that Kwik-Save was closed down years ago, though I would disagree, there are plenty of cheap money supermarkets, the same depressing interiors, disaffected staff, empty shelves and cut-price bargains on offer today all over town.  The amateur dramatic society meetings fortnightly;
'Yes, I have been looking for jobs.'
'Let me see your written evidence of these job-searches/lurches'
'Here you go.'
'Thank-you and goodbye'

It is atmospheric to say the least.  JUST-BAD-LIGHTING.
But probably not a great idea to sign on in Hoxton, where every other person you see is dressed as an art student.  Similar to being in a queue at HnM oxford street. Horrible.  And the staff on abysmal salaries have seen so many likewise they must be a bit peeved. (by like-wise, I do not intend to confuse with actual wise as the three wise men might be).

D-Clothing.
Ahhh, vintage chic.  Yes, that old parsnip.
Always somewhat obscure.  There is a time and a place for it surely.  The time is, near past orders, and the place is inevitably east london.  (FINALLY not cool)

Nursing (Not Bursuring) convictions of the emporer with new clothes, there is a somewhat trend in old ratty clothes being worn on young people.  Part of it is, that in NO WAY would you be employed wearing the dish-cloth as a skirt over the top of your school jumper UNLESS you were being paid lots in a media job/fashion/arts-lakky specifically in the East End, OR you don't need to work at all.  You bowl around in this get-up as a semi-political statement, and are mistaken that you look very couture.
For me personally, it was noticing a subtle harboring of jealousy (never nice) against children (ummmm...) better-dressed than I.  see below.

They actually do go into offices and do stuff involving maths key stage 2 so schuut. 

Anyway, so I guess the key point is, as long as we can just try to make the little noise as is possible while there are kids trying to have a kip, MP's trying to salvage marriages, and the media trying to toss it all up into a salad of doom pre-main course horror-hitchcock-style, where desert is the squelchy fleshy brain-blamanche of sense. . .Well we're just doing fine.

more art writ on Hysterical women n sex

To what extent is the surrealist description of Hysteria as ‘the greatest poetic discovery of the late nineteenth century’ related to the movements perceived failure to confront issues of desire and sexual difference?’

In the critique on surrealism, the Freudian concept of ‘hysteria’ is posited as being ‘Pivotal to a surrealist poetics and aesthetics of desire#’.  So it is highly relevant to the movements’ perceived failure to confront issues of desire and sexual difference.  I will try to show how, through the movements tenets to psychoanalysis, contradictions arise in the anti-establishment sentiment proclaimed in surrealist ideology.  Because, ‘Psychoanalysis is the creation of the male genius, and almost all who have developed his idea’s have been men#’ then how could the movement have helped to re-align sexual difference and desire, when it is so tied-up in Freudian psychoanalysis- a school of thought limited by its age-old understanding of gendered subject positions in patriarchal society?

Basically, psychoanalysis shows up the one-sided ideas and desires of the male, and as hysteria is diagnosed according to Freudian principles, the surrealist usage of it gives more scope to the movements continuation of the patriarchal and ordered society that it promised to break free from.

The protagonists of the movement in issue 11 of La Revolution Surrealiste, state of the ’hysteria’ condition (which was previously abandoned as a specific disorder) that, ‘Hysteria is a more or less irreducible mental state characterized by the subversions of the relations set-up between the subject and the moral world from which it believes itself to have sprung in practise, beyond any delirious system.#’  The subversion of  the conservative relatives in a moral world, is seen expressed by hysterical women- hailed as going beyond the ‘system’ to what is ‘surreal’.  But by a male voice- referencing male spectators of females, explaining it as a kind of salvation, even though it is a state reached by undergoing painful hysterical fits.  The surrealists’ certainty in the psychoanalytic, male prognosis brings into question the extent of their movements own ‘subversiveness’.

The ‘Uncanny’ is a Freudian term for a central concept to psychoanalysis and therefore also to the aesthetics of surrealism.  ‘Uncanny- meaning homesickness, is evoked in understandings of the surreal’#  The psychoanalysis of Freud boils down to the anatomical differences between male and female, and this term is applicable to male anxiety about the female genitalia being their primordial source, but also a threat of their own castration once separated from this source.  And the ascription of ‘Penis-Envy’ to the female by Freudian psychoanalysis only makes room for the male libido- the female cannot have her own power- everything is related to the penis.  The male wants the woman- feels desire for a return ‘home’ but doubly feels agitated at what this desire represents- the giving up of his superiority in the threat of returning to castration- the female threatens his power.

Most of the anxieties experienced by the female are the result of the infantile dawning of a ‘lack’ of male genitalia, which leads to subsequent feelings of insubordination and inadequacy.  The failure of the surrealist movement to confront the issues of sexual difference must have a basis in their heralding of Freudian theory.  Usefully today however, the female which Freud compartmentalised in his own way, can recognise her insubordination, ‘The psychology of women hitherto actually represents a deposit of the desires and disappointments of men.#’ and from this basis, they add critique that the surrealists can be seen as not only failing in properly addressing sexual differences, but prolonging the misrecognition and misrepresentation of the female.  And to show that this argument is not hypocritical, and that this point of view is acknowledged by non-feminists, it is useful to add the male perspective to the misuse of the hysteria- that it is not a way to social revolution, ‘Bretonian surrealism confused decentring with liberation and psychic disturbance with social revolt.#’

Desire is a compound of Seduction and Subversion.  The Freudian insight to male desire is that of the seduction of a return to a primordial state#, and the continuing repetition which surfaces at an instinctual level, the subversion away from which may result from the anxiety of the ‘Uncanny’.   Seduction is active, and subversion is passive.  There is this perpetual flux of the repressed and the its return, and desire, embodies this antagonism.  And this is where the poetics of surrealism collides with the psychoanalysis of hysteria, ‘Poetry hinges on the interrelationship between repression and the return of the repressed which the figure of hysteria dramatises.’#

One can see the attraction to cases of hysteria for the surrealists, which in a sense, and occurrence in the context of the asylum, touched on the un-real, ‘Madness is not linked to the world and its subterranean forms, but rather to man, to his weaknesses, dreams, and illusions.’#
In order to relate the issues of desire and sexual difference visually in surrealist work, we can analyse the iconography of the photographs in an issue of ‘La Revolution Surrealiste’ from 1928# -the  more accessible, legible way for the masses to ‘realise psychoanalysis’ radical artistic and cultural implications#’
In order to relate the issues of desire and sexual difference visually in surrealist work, we can analyse the iconography of the photographs in an issue of ‘La Revolution Surrealiste’ from 1928# -the  more accessible, legible way for the masses to ‘Realise its radical artistic and cultural implications#’
There are photographs showing a girl in four types of hysterical ‘attack’ and includes textual description of a ‘Clownic’# and ‘Attitudes passionelles’ stage.  A young girl, is diffused into stark black background and cartoon-like graphic representation, swallowed in black surroundings, the desirable, possesable woman, is shown in a series of physical contortions.   In feminist criticism, the constellation of her limbs has been likened to, ‘The raging beauty of wild beasts in constrained form.’#  The eroticised nature of the images is blatant, her hair down and disorderly, and presented in the costume of her bedclothes, the set-up perpetuated upon the patient by her male ‘master’ Doctor is concerning.]

For the Surrealists to reproduce the images, and apply the taxonomy of ’passionate stage’ to the images where the girl looks provocatively at the camera- at the male voyeur, the ambiguous nature of their call for the emancipation of all mankind comes to light.  The girl is made the star of ‘hysteria’ and a subject of desire, who pacifies some of the mans guilt for wanting to look with desire through looking as if she invites it.  The evil eye, which ‘Represents the gaze as a castrative threat#’ is atoned because this woman is in moments freed from repression- and seems to be euphoric in the moment of her break-down.  The un-reality of the scene and surreal quality to the photographs implies the ‘other-worldy’.  This looks like a woman acting in her unconscious, ‘The hysteric is in ignorance, perhaps in innocence, but it is a matter of a refusal, an escape, a rejection, and this innocence will soon be renounced as guilt, except that it is unconscious.#’
The surrealist text accompanying this ‘un-masking’ of the sexualised female is falsely laudatory, ‘With its superb aura and its four stages, the third of which captivates us  like the purest, most expressive tableaux vivants’# and shows the objectification of the female in accordance with the authority of the male gaze.  This is a conservative idea that contradicts the surrealist manifesto, the woman is being punished for the ‘Threat to the patriarchal subject#’

The psychoanalysis of Freud on Hysteria attributes the illness to a sexually traumatic encounter in the patients past history.  If the woman is displaying her disconnection from the social system, it is linked to her sexuality- if Bretons statement is true, that ‘Poetry hinges at the interrelationship between repression and the return of the repressed which the figure of hysteria dramatises’ and the study of the condition of hysteria is central to the surrealists aesthetics, then it is an epidemic necessarily used for the sake of the male desires of the surrealists.  The woman is necessarily induced into having her attack, which is shown to be traumatic itself, as a re-living of an attack where she is ‘Accusing; they are pointing- with their paralyses, their dyspneas, their knotted limbs.  And they point to either the father, a dreadful figure, or to some other male kin.#’
In reality, the hysteric performer is in the ‘Polymorphous libidinal state#’ of her instinctual drives if she is back with that which has been repressed, therefore degenerated to a state of disorganisation.  The disturbing case studies which make up Freud’s theory, about the attacks on girls and the pre-sexual age and nature of these repressive incidents are not accounted for in the surrealist article.

She is a pawn in the surrealist manifesto, who has to suffer horrendous abuse to be transformed into some eve-like, transcendental idol of hysteria, pointing to the way out for men, and she is discarded after her contribution to this end is complete, as Helene Cixons notes of Freud’s ’guinea-pig’ Dora; ‘News become scarce.  Does she find another Doctor?  We don’t know what has become of her but her mythical traces.’#

This surrealist mandate of the support for hysteria in woman is cryptic.  Because by the time of the publishing of the third issue of ‘La Revolution Surrealiste’, as a pathological illness it had been found medically redundant- not true, and the ‘illness’ of hysteria had displaced the reputation of Charcot during the process of this realisation.  The Surrealists are resorting to a defunct case-the beliefs that women are overtly sexualised but repressed, and with hysteria being so crucially about repression of sexual appetite, the ‘repressed survives in woman; woman, more than anyone else, is dedicated to reminisce.’#

So the Surrealist movement fails to confront the patriarchal order which it claims Hysteria has the power to usurp, ‘Ernst attributed to the actively seductive hysteria the capacity to destabilise or subvert patriarchal power and authority#.’ The character in the cinematographic photographs is not explained as suffering.  One can add that this freed woman does not stand for the ordinary woman, and that she is not freed of her own making.  The woman has to be deranged in order to contribute to the purpose of a meaningful discourse such as the surrealist movement, and even then she is a ‘Love object’# signifying desire, which is the habit of conservative ideology.

The Surrealists impart the male ‘evil-eye’ - the gaze which puts the woman down- and passes guilt onto her, because she is a threat against it from her penis envy and because she represents a potential castration- which is the entirely disruptive to the patriarchal system.

However they did try to usurp this patriarchal system, and would agree with Freud that hysteria is the result of the repressed bourgeois society, ‘Freud argued that the prevailing social and moral conditions of his age were exacting an inordinately high degree of social repression and in the process were producing a race of neurasthenic men and hysterical women#.’  But on the other hand, the way in which they address the women and put the hysteria theory as the greatest poetic of their age, they appreciate it happening.
Hysteria has a gendered nature- it incites female subordination.  If a woman is most free and best inspiration for a poetic when she is expressively in a hysteric episode, then it reduces women to being eroticised, and less aligned to rational thought.  The woman is subordinated to the male doctors of psychology and are released from their emotional suffering, through ‘talking it out’ with men- the other  ground-breaking Freudian tactic of talking through issues in order.  The result is that the Surrealist movement could be accused of only re-formatting society’s consistent ‘Phallic Imperialism#’ coined by Lucie Iriguray.


The key absent issue ignored by the ‘discovery of hysteria as a great poetic‘ - perhaps as a means to the surrealists’ ends,  is the painfulness of the experience of hysteria for female patients- and the belief that it is them experiencing their true, unrepressed nature -interpreted as how men see them, and this shows the dichotomy of the surrealist movement.  The women are induced into hysteria, a re-living of a trauma, for, ‘Above all, an audience of men; inquisitors, magistrates, doctors- the circle of doctors with their fascinated eyes#’ is how Helen Cixons describes an famous painting of Charcot in‘Grand Hysteria’.

Another point not confronted, is that the women are attention-seeking- and not truly free during these attacks, but acting up as trained by a male audience.  Perhaps this is not confronted because it would expose the consortium of doctors at St-Petriere who supposedly conducted sexual relations with the girls-‘Does Freud, who owes so much to Charcot, remember the days when, come nightfall, the patients would either meet them outside or welcome them in their beds#?’

‘This mental state is founded on the need for a reciprocal suggestion or counter-suggestion.  Hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon and can in every sense be considered a supreme means of expression.’#  The surrealist movements attachment to hysteria as a great ‘poetic discovery’ in a way certifies that it is no illness but a great, sometime euphoric state which is also conducive as a means to their utopian end.

Putting women as resolutely sexualized, and inducing this hysterical state, is so limiting- only from a regression to a suppressed pre-sexual point in some grotty interaction with an exploitative male, can they obtain freedom, as falsely recognised in hysterical states, which are likened by Surrealists, to dreams in the sense of a loss-of-consciousness and the boundaries of everyday life and decorum, ‘The hysteric unties familiar bonds, introduces disorder into the well-regulated unfolding of everyday life, gives rise to magic in ostensible reason’#

For Foucault, the conception of madness since the classical period has been based on the emergence of subjectivity as the locus of philosophical thinking…The modern attitude to madness is based on an understanding of the madman as the subject of his disease.#’  Where the surrealists would argue for the former- ‘Marvellous’, medieval interpretation of madness, and from their studies of hysteria, that madness is almost a gift that offers to women, freedom from societies hegemony.
‘In the middle ages the words of the madmen were not considered to be part of the common discourse, their words were considered to be null and void.  Yet their words were also believed to have strange powers, to reveal some hidden truths, predict the future, reveal what the wise were not able to perceive.’ #

It is not for nothing that the main work of Andre Breton is entitled, ‘L’Amour Fou’ - mad love.  The very term, ‘Marvellous’ has its roots in medieval etymology,
The Surrealist movement wanted to achieve the ‘marvellous’ in order to rupture the natural order.  Mentally ill people were seen as being wise in medieval times, the very same poetic is applied to the hysterical women that are used, in order to import their way of change upon society. ‘The marvellous may even be an attempt to work through ’hysterical’#.

Is it reasonable to suggest that the surrealists wanted to resurrect the ‘poetic’ of hysteria in predicting a future that was free from the subjectivity that emerged from the classical period, and further developed into the social system of bourgeoisie?  The answer is, quite possibly, in order for a ‘Re-enchantment of a disenchanted world’.#    Most important for the surrealist movement was the abdication of the ’real’ and rational order of capitalist society that stifled ‘freedom’, their main task was to stop the atrophy of the repressive Victorian society. Through embracing all that is unreal, and disassociating from it, because they could not cope with the pre-sexual traumas they lived through,  the hysterics were the surrealists poster-girls against moral constraints; ‘We who love nothing more than these young hysterics, whose perfect example is provided by observations relating to the wonderful X.L (Augustine)’#

‘For around 100 years, the western capitalist bourgeoisie has set up shop under the sign of ‘liberty’ and the clearest of its spiritual resources would seem to be used to wash this alluring sign clean of the intellectual and moral stains endlessly accruing to it.’#

In conclusion, the failure of the surrealist movement to confront issues of desire and sexual difference is highly related to their sponsoring of ‘Hysteria’.  This movement is new in its use of psychoanalysis.  But it still perpetuates a distinctly male narrative, the same order of a patriarchal society that has set-up shop for previous art movements.
The fashion of psychoanalysis at the time seems slightly convenient, and any reading of a surrealist text or film- for instance, ‘The Andalusian Dog’ collaborated on by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel- the condensed artistic representation of the aesthetic, will present the trope of aggressive punishment of the female by the male.

‘Cars pass at breakneck speeds.  Suddenly one of them runs over her, frightfully mutilating her.  Then, decisively, as though he had every right to do so, the man approaches his companion, looks her lasciviously straight in the eye (the evil-eye gaze) and puts his hands on her breasts, over her jersey.  Close up of the lascivious hands on her breasts…Flattened, terrified, against the wall, the girl watches her aggressor’s manoeuvres.  He advances on her…’#

In publishing subject matter like this, and the visual presentations of the female in photography, collage and painting, there is a significant lack of critique that dry’s the mouth when thinking about the surrealists promised enterprise and the actual reality of the Surreal.



# Lomas, David, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, Ch. 2, The Omnipotence of Desire: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis and Hysteria, ed. Vincent Gille, Jennifer Mundy & Dawn Ades, Tate publishing, London, 2001, p.55
#  Horney, Karen, p.27, Gender and Envy in Surrealism, ‘The Flight from Womanhood’ ed. Burke, Nancy, Route ledge, NY/London, 1998, p.27

# Louis Aragon and Andre Breton put forward this statement in issue no. 11 of La Revolution Surrealiste, entitled ‘The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria’, Surrealism Against the Current - Tracts and Declarations, ed. Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkonski, Published by Sterling, London, Pluto Press, 2001, p.143

#  Foster, Hal, Compulsive Beauty, October books, MIT Press, 1993, p.5
#   Horney, Karen, Gender and Envy in Surrealism ‘The Flight from Womanhood: Some Psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes’, ed. Nancy Burke, Routeledge, (New York, London) 1998, printed USA, p29
# Foster, Hal, Compulsive Beauty, p.5
#  Compulsive Beauty, Hal Foster states the ‘existence of an instinctual compulsion to retreat- to return to a prior state, p.8
# Lomas, David ‘Surrealism: Desire Unbound’ p.55
#  Ferit Guven, Madness and Death in Philosophy, taken from discussion on Michael Foucault, ch 5, ‘Madness and Death in Philosophy,’ State Uni of New York press, USA, 2005, p.126
#  recycled from Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot’s studies of hysteria at La Salpetriere Asylum in 1878,
#   Lomas, David, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, p.55
#  recycled from Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot’s studies of hysteria at La Salpetriere Asylum in 1878,
#   Hal, Foster, Surrealism: Desire Unbound , p.5
#  Cixons, Helene & Clement, Catherine, The Newly Born Woman, Ch. 3, ‘Sorceress and Hysteria‘, ‘In the schema of hysterical attacks that Charcot traces, the explanation of the ’clownic’ stage is found in the perversion of seducers who, in the grip of automatic repetition which dates from childhood, indulge themselves by seeking gratification in crazy capers and make pratfalls and impossible faces’ I.B Tauris Publishers, 1996, p.12
#   Cixons, Helene & Clement, Catherine, The Newly Born Woman, I.B Taurus Publishers, (London) 1996 p.12
#   Foster, Hal, Compulsive beauty, p.8
#   Cixons, Helene & Clement Catherine, The Newly Born Woman, p.14
#   Breton, Andre & Aragon, Luis, The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria: surrealism against the current, tracts and declarations, Ed. And translated bu M. Richardson & Krzysztof,  Sterling, Virgina, Pluto Press (published London) 2001, p.143
#  Foster, Hal, Compulsive Beauty, p.13
# Cixons, Helene  & Clement, Catherine , The Newly Born Woman, p.42
#  Friedman, John A. , Gender and Envy in Surrealism, ed. Nancy Burke, Routeledge, N.Y/London, 1998, p.61
#   p.5 Cixons, Helene  & Clement, Catherine , The Newly Born Woman
#   Cixons, Helene  & Clement, Catherine , The Newly Born Woman , p5
#   Kelly, Julia, Surrealism: Desire unbound ed. Gille, Vincent, Mundy, Jennifer  &  Ades, Dawn, Princeton University Press, 2001, p.72
#  Belton, Robert J. , The Beribboned Bomb- the image of woman in male surrealist art, university of Calgary press, (Canada) 1995, p.33
#   Micale,  Mark S. , On the ‘Disappearance’ of hysteria: A study in the clinical deconstruction of a diagnosis, article from jstor, ISIS, @1993, The History of Science Society, Published by University of Chicago Press, p.499
#  Iriguray, Lucie , The Way of Love, Continuum (London, New York) translated by Bostic, Heidi & Pluhacek, Stephen , p.135
#  Cixons, Helene  & Clement, Catherine , The Newly Born Woman , p10
#   Breton, Andre & Aragon, Louis, ed. And translated by Richardson, M.  &  Fijalkonski, Krzysztof, Surrealism Against the Current,  ‘The Fiftieth anniversary of Hysteria, Breton and Aragon, 1928, p. 143
#  Breton , Andre and Aragon , Louis taken from ‘The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria’, Surrealism Against the Current- Tracts and Declarations  p.143
# Cixons, Helen and Clement, Catherine , The Newly Born Woman p.5
#    Guven, Ferit, ‘Madness and Death in Philosophy’, Ch. 4, p.121
#    Rajcham, John, Foucault, freedom of philosophy, (new york) Columbia University Press, 1985, p145
# Foster, Hal , Compulsive Beauty p21
#  Foster, Hal,  Compulsive Beauty, ch. 2
#   Breton, Andre & Aragon, Luis, Surrealism Against the Current,  ‘The Fiftieth anniversary of Hysteria, (1928), p.143
#    Surrealism against the current- Tracts and Declarations- ‘Poetry transfigured‘, Ed. And translated by Richardson, M. & Fijalkonski, Krzysztof, London, (Sterling, Virginia) Pluto press, 2001, p.148
#    Bunuel, Luis, & Dali, Salvador, ‘An Andalusian Dog ‘(1929), ‘Surrealist Literature, Surrealist on Art, ‘About Women,’ p102, ed. Lippard, Lucy R., Spectrum, 1970, printed in USA.

art writ what iz realizm???

‘The obstacle to realism in American painting is that there have been too many kinds, each arising from an individually acquired way of seeing.  Reality, or the sense of  it, depends on a unified style shared by artists and the community.’#


One key issue to address when muscling into the separate realist-abstract affinities, and whether there is 
cross-over’ between the two as made claim by the title, is the political affiliations that affect the representation of the contemporary, daily life depicted by the different types of styles in both.  Whether one agrees that the Abstract Expressionists work could be called ‘realist’ depends on where the ‘realist’ values have changed, and on which ‘reality’ is being represented in the paintings. 
The claim that Tansy makes is from his point that, ‘The problem or question is, which reality?  In a painted picture, is it the depicted reality, or the reality of the picture plane, or the multi-dimensional reality the artist and viewer exist in?#’


The Hegelian concept which displaces representation from ‘reality’ explains both paradoxical assertions of the question, ‘True reality lies beyond immediate sensation and the objects we see everyday.#’   This rather enigmatic ‘spirit of life’# which the realists endeavoured to capture, or essential truth, is similarly found in abstract art- where in critique, similar quasi-religious terms have been used to describe the work of the abstract expressionists, ‘People who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience which I had when I painted them.’#


At the turn of the century, a paradigm shift had occurred in society, which had its effect upon culture and thereupon art.  In a very loose sense, the effect upon the traditional ‘realist’ art which had originated in Paris and from Courbet, was the stretching of the meaning of ‘realist’ work from being a mirror to nature, to a more modern realism which depicted scenes of life in a more ‘active’ sense.  
This change resulted in the pseudonym ‘social-realist’ being attached to the American painters who kept their pictures without narrative, symbolism or moral point but in doing this, were working for a greater change in art completely.   One could look at the social-realists as trying to create an art that was anti-elite, anti-consumerist and which could be understood by those with recompense to art historical schooling.  Glackens, a leading American Realist stated a promising manifesto, ‘The Realists were, in truth, painters adrift in the twentieth century, amiable provincials determined to find joy in life and nobility in character.’#


So how could the Tansey deny his work as realist when it is representational and Lichtenstein claim that the ‘realist’ subject is so broad that even the non-representational pictures of Abstract Expressionists can be seen as ‘Realist’?


Tansy disassociates himself from the realist genre through  a summary which would hold the claim of Lichtenstein to be true, the point of this essay will be to unfold this.  ‘I am not a realist painter.  In the nineteenth century, photography co-opted to traditional function of  realist painters, which was to make faithful renditions of “reality”.  Then the realist project was taken over by modernist abstraction.’# 
Nochlin sums up the basic aim of realism as to ‘give a truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation of contemporary life’# and one can observe Tansey’s point about photography as being shared amongst contemporaries of the social-realists such as the ‘Steiglitz group’, a collective of artists who saw the machination of capitalist modern america as a secession of some painting as it had been known before.  With the dawning of mass-consumerism and mechanisation, and the introduction of the camera, the use of realist painting to shine a mirror back at nature was now defunct.  ‘The first expectation of photography, the reason some supposed painting was finished, was that it would render every detail perfectly.#’ 


If Tansey were arguing that the role of traditional realist painting was now less valuable, then his painting is a contrast to that genre.  Indeed, his paintings are implicit with meaning- something avoided in realist works, he even refers to his work as ‘Iconographical’#   His paintings also depict a time past- ‘Action Painting II’ can be seen as a critique of the abstract expressionists in itself.  Courbet began his   pursuit of realism quoting that ‘I hold that artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century.’#  In this painting, the palette is far from the monochromic realist one, but an ethereal green, and here the artist Picasso and braque are painting the metaphorical rising rocket of modernity- both artists of the past century and arguably originators of the modernist movement in America. 


Lichtenstein’s opinion must be based upon the nature of the reality being depicted.  If the realist movement was superseded by the modernists, then the way of looking at art must have changed.  Maybe the point which is Lichtenstein makes is that the Abstract Expressionists are realist painters in the progressed stages of the concerns of realist painting- working at the time of the cold war, ‘in times of violence, personal predilections for niceties of colour and form seem irrelevant.’ 


By the time of the Abstract Expressionists, a shift in how reality was perceived had occurred, and on whose perception was important- painting was a more individualistic enterprise, democratic in the shift from attention being paid to the experience of the action of painting to transfer the sense of ‘reality’.  
With the introduction of modernism, the two-dimensional painting surface was seen as an object in itself- with various ‘interruptions’ to stop ‘pure-perception’ from painting to observer and ultimately, artist to viewer. 


The traditional school of American realist art, like that of Bellows and Sloane, (And the other original American Realists, who are grouped together from exhibiting this genre at the  ‘The Eight’ exhibition of 1908) with their socialist values# and depicted scenes which were meant to show ‘the raw, physical impact of modern life’#, the experience of modern life was seen as less valuable when painted in a descriptive way.  As Lichtenstein states, the same essence of the ‘real truth’ was being painted out, the Abstract Expressionists had ‘belief in the validity of inner experience, its authenticity was considered more true and more real than objective fact and appearance.’#

The value of the individual, the human mind and how it perceived reality, or what is behind described appearance is important to both realist and abstract expressionist.  ‘Intuition provided an avenue of entry, which, as one communed with the life inherent in forms and objects, allowed an endlessly continuous sense of creation within the eye and mind of the beholder.’#
Pollock- a key in the New York School, painted out of the unconscious, but as is argued by Michael Leja, ‘the unconscious should be understood as a construction dependent upon social and historical condition.’#  So even though intuition takes precedence over intellectual process, which is a realist idea, and quite opposite to Tansey’s ordered and unified painting composition.  By this definition, the statement of Lichtenstein could be seen as true- abstract expressionists works are products of their contemporary reality.  Realism in the traditional sense if just more generalised.  ‘Every intelligent modern painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head.  It is his real subject, of which everything he paints is both a homage to and a critique, and everything he says a gloss.’#


‘Therein non-academic and realistic representation is not necessarily truth, whereas truth is more described in the instinct of the artist.  About this point, Lichtenstein and Tansey seem agreed.  Reality under a new shift in western thinking, was being seen as an ongoing process, ‘a flux perceived in immediate experience.’#  


Perception and individual perception is what realism and abstract expressionists share, it seems that abstract expressionism  is the prolonged formulation of what realism set-out to do.  Having realised the limits of the conditions of the medium of painting itself, and the interruptions which affect the viewer’s experience of perception with the transferral of information from a representation of the artists individual perception of a scene, choice of brushstrokes and other factors,  the abstract-expressionists founded an art-type without interruption of this perception.   ‘Realistic, illusionist art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art…modernist painting demonstrates, precisely in its resistance to the sculptural, that it continues the tradition and the themes of tradition, despite all appearances to the contrary#’  


The message taken up by the social-realists, from Tolstoys’ ‘What is Art’ (American edition, 1898) was ‘that an important function of art was to re-create in the viewer the feelings possessed by the artist in the act of creation#.‘  The truth is now to describe to the viewer the feelings of the artist in the act of creation - his own particular truth which was very seated in political and contemporary life.  ‘A great many objects in the world, when presented to our senses, put in motion a complex nervous machinery, which ends in some instinctive appropriate act.’#


It may here be useful TO END with a quote which summarises the problematic of realism and the idea of the realistic that one attaches to it, ‘Realism is often mistakenly conflated against “abstraction” due to the conflation of realism with realistic.’#  

style and the american scene, Harold Rosenberg, the anxious object.
# tansey website point- web address.
# linda nochlin, first chapter
#
# Quote from Phillip Rothko, in Oliver Larkin, p 195 Abstract Expressionism, Oliver Larkin Shapiro,
# p209 American Sculpture and Painting
# http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/tansey.html
# Linda Nochlin, ‘Realism’ chapter 1...PAGE ???
# Modernism: Challenges and Perspectvies p197
# http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/tansey.html
# Courbet quotes, p28, ’Realism’ Linda Nochlin
# Sloane was a member of the socialist party from 1912-1916 american art ref…205?
# american art and sculpture p204
# Abstract Expressionists, p8/9
# Early Modernism, p211, american art and sculpture…
# Representing the unconscious, Michael Leja, reading american art, p440
# Quote from R. Motherwell, p195, oliver larkin, Abstract Expressionism, Shapiro pair.
# american scultpure and painting p210
# p…Clement Greenberg, modernist painting. Reading Form- modern art and modernism, ed Harrison and Wood,
# American Art and Sculpture p197
# p70, an essay in aesthetics, roger fry---modern art and modernism, ed Harrison and franscina
# Realism, representation and Surrealism p251

24 August 2011 05:35 

there once was a man from shoreditch,
who wore vintage gear to appear kitsch,
he hung around brick lane,
where they all looked the same,
and the last line is up to you.

Oh dear.  I have broken a bone.  My dog n bone phone.  Phones are, of course now in 2011, what people in the furure will find us buried with.  The fossilised equivalent feature of the pentadactyl-limb which proved Darwins theory of Evolution correct.  As important in seperating us ape-derived humans from other species as the aposable thumb that led the apes away to victory over other, less advanced species.

The veritable effigy of our population- an iron tool to the iron-age - an iphone to our telecommunication age.  Our 'phoney' technological age; which sees us living with our 'phoney' mates on Facebook - each individual facebook account our own individual testament.  Our very own Holy Book.  Our personalised Yellow Pages.  The Age of the Dearth of the Individual, replaced by a technological whole, where we connect online, I think of as a new kind of Indivigilante, if you get my meaning.

So it's more than a trifle that I can't personally stop these electronic devices from collapsing and breaking around me.  Is it my fault for putting too much emphasis on them?  If I had bothered to back-up all of my contacts into an address book, then the whole issue of losing numbers would not be such a bonfire of shit.  It is I, who is the problem, in being too reliant on these little devices, and not seeing how they can exist in combination to the real world.  Perhaps.

But I am sure the moniker, 'The Iphone is not just for Christmas, it's for up until next Christmas, when the next version of the Iphone comes to point of sale" which is the problem.  The paradigm shift of us as a population becoming a more wasteful bunch of humans.  Churning out and getting rid, and filling-up and backing-up.

The eery thing about this attitude - The disposable, the deleting of texts, the eradication of emails and communications between people in order to allow for more techno traffic to come in without blocking-up our second brains' memory, THIS is deceptive in the grand shceme of things.

Artist-Potato

Artists, like your garden potato, come in myriad shapes and forms, shades and colours, tones and hues.  For reasons of epistemological survey, I like to categorise these different versions to better quantify them as a whole.  A big bowl of potato salad if you will.

First, there are the 'East London Street Artists' crews.  These guys, (and I say guys, as there really is only one girl in Gold Peg-maybe Miss Van counts but she is pretty-big-time now) are into Graffiti.  Massively into it.  They rate Seen, they've all been in, or know someone who has been in Banksys film, they go out at night painting by Hackney Canal and insist to anybody who will listen, that they are as 'Wanted' by the police (Whom they refer to as Pigs) as Osama was to Bush.  They have studios in the Peanut Factory or elsewhere around Dace Road and Hackney Wick.  Some, working with End Of The Line, do set themselves up in basements under galleries in central or even scope out to the community strongholds in vauxhall, where emin owns key to mot n key castle.  But mostly, these shape-shifters like anywhere basically, past the Roman Road to Bow and the Nunnery.  And they hang-out for a pint at the uniquely East-End-Boozer, the Palm Tree.  I once saw that builder bloke from Charlie Dimmocks garden show there- he was/is, a proper 'GEEE-zer'.  This batch are fun, but don't say anything about them not being 'Up', or you will be sprayed red.  They have ink-stained fingers and use spray-cans like the naughty ADHD children do in those Super-Soaker 3000 tv adverts.  They have a seperate career as a Fine Artist, and have even in some cases had items bought by Sargeant Saatchi- who they now refer to as THE DEVIL.  They used to show at Black Rat or other urban 'Underground' galleries, but now they have made enough money to open-up their own galleries out in the 'Bush' of the East-End.  So they have also now changed their process to include a lot of print-making- these can be sold en masse, quicker and therefore make them more money to buy more paint to blah blah and so on and so forth.  They don't really look after themselves though as they are mainly Big Kids.  They still wear dungarees and eat Tomato Ketchup on toast for their breakfast in the morning, as the Sugar in the Ketchup gives them energy and the bread sustains their carb-carborettas.  Some of them also DJ.  Mostly they all LOVE HIP-HOP CULTURE/DA BRONX/SUBWAY TRAINS

As well, and my least favoured shape, are the 'South London Graduates'.  These kids have just left Wimbledon, Goldsmiths or Camberwell, and are cutting their aristocratically-fine teeth in the-what I call, 'Keychain-Galleries'.  These are, notably rubbish galleries, set-up around back-alleys in East London and run by usually more than one Older, ex-artist-turned gallery owner.  A latter-day Barnados for recent graduates.  They spend their days writing songs for their post-indie-alt-neu-roche band, inventing new words and doing video installations in their studios - either Woodmill, V22 Biscuit Factory, or the Bow Art Studios in Bermondsey.  They have been taught nothing at art school and come-out venting the lack of direction, a free-falling artistic-angst which they then use to turbo-power ultra-shit art.  Such as a video talking about why they like art.  Or making photographs of dead animals jut so that they can go to the cool Print Space on Kingsland Road to hang about, further emancipating themselves by looking through the 'Edgy' magazines and books laid out on the coffee table whilst they wait for their prints to be developed.  They look at websites such as ArtLicks.com and enter their cronies into listings on these 'alternative' sites, but none of their shows are good.  They have demure personalities, and perhaps questions daily, what THEIR ART is.  Further propping-up their angst.  They insist they can see the different tones in black and get quite easily troubled if you don't agree that you can, also, differentiate.

Next, there are the 'North London Gang' who have themselves, carved-out a new upcoming area of Severn Sisters, a place now filling-up with shit-hole-old-warehouses-turned-shit-hole-old-warehouses-with-rubbish-pictures in them.   They have found their place on Gumtree and they probably smoke pot, they basically appropriate what the East London crew but in a place where nobody ever goes, and therefore none of their street art is ever seen.  A lot of this bunch are foreign, and are relieved that Dalston is but a short cycle-ride away so they feel less left-out-in-the-cold.  A mysterious group this lot, I should imagine that a lot of them will be entering their work into the Hackney Wicked Festival and just continue to bat-about in North London, dressing very well, until one of their job-applications comes good and they go off to work as an accountant or someother.

Also not forgetting, 'THE AMERICANS'.  These, obviously, are progeny of outside the UK, and come over, flights-paid for and possibly a studio residency offered for them above Stolen Space at DFaces gallery in the Truman Brewery, or put-up in a hotel off Shoreditch High Street.  They basically own themselves and have shitloads of swagger.  Whether from New York, or from LA, they have a lot of power with their US galleries and often have to be babysat.  Here in London they moan about us having 'Loads of street-artists, but NO STREET ART'.  Which, I think, I agree with to an extent.  They may paste-up a few cut-outs next-to an Eine in a high-profile spot whilst they are here but pretty-much they just do 'Street art' for galleries now, as they are making quite a few buck.  They don't really use spray anymore, as you can't mix the colours and they believe their art is now more than its genesis in Graffiti.  GRAFFITI IS NOT STREET ART as they heavily insist.  These guys never nicked a can of paint from a hardware shop and probably don't know who Martha Cooper is, though they do rate RJ Rushmore, and even deign to be interviewed for VeryNearlyAlmost.com.  However their replies to questions about their work is often glib, as 'Darling', they have been asked the same questions SOOOOO many times.  They are like the - Rock-Stars' of the art scene today.  Many of them used to skateboard and their mates with Sheperd Fairey and Word To Mother.  Basically, they have either just met-up with Eine n kids out in LA at a recent Geffrey exhibition, or have just finished an album cover for some inane pop star such as Christina Aguilera.  Somewhat incongruous.  Artists have to eat.  Subway Art Gallery owned by Mr Wim is also a popular haunt for them to hang-out in of an evening, as the gallery is a classic 'Underground' gallery, which is a kind way of saying that it could pass for a car sale showroom.

Lastly for now, as I could go on forever but have to actually do some work...are the 'West London Grade'.  These are the RA and Royal College MA graduates.  They have solid relationships with the Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair Galleries.  Hauser and Wirth is like a spare room to them.  They produce large-scale, hugh-cost works of art.  Such as a 30 ft rotating neon light.  They may have won a Turner Prize a few years back, and also manage to have studios with a bunch of assistants, probably off Leonard Street, near to Julian Opies print studio.  They jet around the world, not really saturating their practise with too much hanging-out with the other London art kids, they may be mates with Jasper Joffee who may write-up a piece of work about them.  The ICA is a killer spot for them to be and they often have young families, who have mentally curly hair, long names, and very clean fingernails.

SO, there is a definitive guide, not complete, but therein, as much as it possible- to a few genres of artists about today.

The Emancipation of Pixel Man Poem

A Poem for Kids


He came out of a stuttering tv set,
And looked around to forge a way.

To make his pixels merge to one,
Then perhaps with the kids he could play.

His lonely heart had seen them,
From his vantage far away.

He sometimes thought he had dreamed them,
For him there was no night or day.

No one was about-it was quiet,
And it all looked very real and 3d.

So he started to think about how,
And what first to do and try to see.

He was small-the same size of a pencil,

Pixels fluttered from him like feathers.

What if the people don't notice- he worried,

As his mind slopped into a list of whethers.

He sat down and he worried and twittered,
And he even thought about going back home.

But amidst his head some happy thoughts cluttered,

As out here perhaps he would not be alone.

And then he heard a quite wonderful sound,
An arpedgio of laughter and glee.

"Oh dear-what will happen after,
The children i know see me?!'"

A girl and a boy ran into the room,

Bubbling giggles and expecting cartoons.

What they saw was a tiny, little man of dots,

And delighted they said with a boom:-

"How marvellous to meet you sir, we know you from in there- ,"

The boy pointed to the tele-set and picked him up with lots of care

The pixelman was happy- how nice they really are--

And that all happened ten years ago and its still going well so far.

Google-eyed

I spent three years studying art, four including post grad infact, in an expensive game of Simon Says choreographed by the spectre of a middle-class conscience, acting out the same progression to higher education as prophesized by this camp as a necessary chunk of the staple diet for career success.  Labouring under the similiar false pretenses as must burden the soul of a thrice-married lady uttering her fourth round of wedding vows, I spent a quite significant segment of my life fertilizing a hitherto wanton brain with useful pellets about paintings.  A kind of painting-by-numbers of pounds my student overdraft could not take.

Over the same duration of time in which I could have had four kids, settled with the council upon a decent nest-egg and doused myself daily in the cheap lager my child benefit would have stretched to after expenses, I remitted to a course of perpetual self-flagellation:- spending as many nights awake wincing-out the statutory word-count on 'French Romantic Art' and other more ambiguous titles, as those spent by those Eskimos in Norther Siberia, who differentiate Night from Day by the arrival of the Annual Summer Equinox.

Pacing oneself through the Jamboree of student-life, sustained wholly on a pallette of carbohydrates, varying my culinary intake by differing tones of beige, (The interior of my digestive tract must have looked like the magnolia-painted lounge of a centrefold of Good Housekeeping), I tolerated an invisible number of future delinquents and criminals - as is statistically undeniable, all of which I embraced for the sake of my degree course. 
       Which, incidentally, was a course I would in any restaurant, send back to the kitchen for a re-heat - before asking the waiter under my breath if there were any jobs going.

I loook back on it as being like an awkward slow-dance with my future self.  There I am, my future selfs firmer grip around my waist, cajouling with it, that yes, this is a bit wierd but the lights will soon come on and it will be less mortifying.

All this, I did not forsake myself to, so that five years from the day I joined the queue in my Halls of Residence for the Middle Classes equivalent of National Service, some anonymous Peter Pan of a Man working for Google would be now benefitting financially from staying inside on the ABC computer during primary school play-breaks - to have invented a catastrophic, grossly misrepresentational, Google-ated version of a real-life visit to a Gallery or Museum.

Cyber geeks have their own innocuous notion of being 'Web Artists'.  There are myriad graphic designers and talented creative types who can merge an eye for aesthetica with an understanding of web-vernacular.  Some techies (cyber-trekkies) are veritable linguists of HTML code.  They vary in ability from the big online hackers to the online shelf-stackers, as muchg as I don't understand their wizardry, (Which it is, and my ineptitude is testified in this website here), I want them to remain penned within these defined boundaries and leave Artists in the true sense, well alone.

Only a tech-luvvie would recommend how cool it is to be able to see any work of art in a museum or a public gallery at the touch of a button on your computer.  However, the ramifications of encouraging people to look at a pixellated, digitally coloured photograph of a work of art as like a vitamin substitute for the real fruit, are massively negative. 
       Having worked as part of the 'Emporio Arts army', I can verify that the photos of works I took at a gallery to then upload online, had to be processed through various software to diminish its qualities and remove it yet further from it human authorship.  JPegs can reduce a work of IMPACT in the flesh to a digitally homogenised potato-print version of its former wonderful state, devouring the human verve from which it came.  Destroying evidence of the true colours made from light originally which is carefully recreated in galleries and evident to the artist whilst he/she is creating.




Slow Roast Pork and edible friends


You cannot taste a photo of a plate of Eggs Florentine from Jamie Olivers website, unfortunate as this might be.  Likewise, you cannot transcend into the world away from technology, other people and distracting nouns, to that space which the artist protagonist has evolved over thousands of years of paint-stained, torturous, eclesiastical training, as is possible when you are staring gormlessly at the piece in real life.  Things stop when you can connect to a work of art.  A further plus- no pop-up ad asking you if you fancy buying a bulk-load of dietary supplements appears.

As much as the art market has worked on a satellite economy, art-works should also stay rotating around, and apart from, our digital ozone layer.  Informing people about art in cyber-bites is truly, important.  But so too is informing of what art itself is in this sense.  To be able to enlarge a picture of John Martins, 'Great Day of His Wrath' online, is good.  It's great.  But as much as music artists revolted against free websharing of tracks for the sake of keeping the industry open for new talent and retaining some financial bracket around what they have made, so must the artists passed, have their legacies protected. 

Great Day of His Wrath, John Martin, 1851-1853

Article on why Google art project doesn't replace museums:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36934/robert-mapplethorpe-archive-goes-to-la-why-the-google-art-project-doesnt-replace-museums-and-more-must-read-art-news/

What Nicky Serota reckoned:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/01/google-art-project-classic-works

True say:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/06/google-art-project-virtual-masterpieces

Rimming around Old Street

Myself and a friend went out last weekend near Old Street and found ourselves as bit parts in the opposite of your conventional Western.  Definition: an Eastern.  (Perhaps directed by Clint Westwood). 

STAGE DIRECTIONS:
Saloon = Bar
Rodeo horse = Brightly-coloured bike
Cowboy boots = Brogues

I don't know when it happened, perhaps I slept through it, but some kind of natural disaster involving the Sun, a shitload of solar energy and an explosion occured in Shoreditch recently.  Thank God my eyes were shut at the time, unlike a vast proportion of eighteen to twenty-five year olds in the region, who have been left with irrevocable damage to their eyesight.  An error resulting in the obligatory wearing of protective, bullet-proof glass, NHS-style glasses.

Either that, or this tribe of yoot are just such ravers and night-owls that their sight-capacity has diminished to the point of no longer registering light over a wattage of 'Dim, Black or Neon.'  Maybe their ocular-muscles are over-strained from days spent pouring over Vice magazine.  Whatever, walking around with their heads on must be like being trapped inside a key-hole camera.

Yo man, you too should have gone to SpecRavers

There has got to be a reason for such outrageously shit eye-wear, really there must.  Because it is illegal in the UK for children to not be schooled up to the age of 16 years.  This will not likely be cut in the rest of the oncoming onslaught of by our coalition government, as it has stood generations in good stead to, on the whole, make informed judgements, educated guesses and use empirical reasoning.  From all of which, anyone would conclude that this 'look' is very silly indeed.

I don't know where it came from, or how long we will be safe from it, but I need someone to blame.  First point of call is, quite unimaginatively, the Good Lord Jesus Snr.  There is a reference in the Old Testament forecasting a grim dawning of the End Of Time where a plague of Locusts descend to ravage populations.  Nothing in the Good Book about plagues of kids donning 'Low-Cost' eyewear, so God is on this account not guilty.  He in probably thumbing through his receipts as I write, looking to get the magic beans back spent on us, over this latest craze to add to the Fall of Man.  Giving Man the chance to look this way of Mans own volition is probably more than a bit embarassing for him in the big Staffroom in the Sky. 

Not one of these Scenesters wearing said spectacles can have a genuine problem with partial-sightedness.  This is simply proven with the Science of Deduction|:-
               - If these glasses were actually aids for vision, then the wearer/wayfarer, would by proxy be able to see what they looked like with them on, and promptly take them off, afterwards checking about themselves to see if anyone had seen them.
               - If, on the other hand, these instruments are worn by a kid who does not rely on them to cross a road safely, and wearing them infact is detrimental to their field of vision due to the inevitable 'Blurring' we all know well from trying on our mates glasses (or from nailing a couple of bottles of vino of a Tuesday afternoon), then, ipso facto, they are worn as a 'Look' rather than 'To Look'.

The poor petals cannot actually see how much of a div they appear to others.  They are helpless to asssess themselves in this state.  Which in these terms, makes their 'Fashion Statement' a form of visual tourettes:- A silent but voilently offensive swear-word on their faces which we must either politely ignore, or tick off said tic.

Engaging in conversation with anyone wearing these double-glazed glasses is tricky if you get close enough for an encounter baring in mind that their experience of seeing you, takes a lot of effort.  If you have ever tried to see underwater, you might relate.  It is difficult to conduct a conversation with someone whose whole upper-head is in a conservatory, you might want to let them know that they can let the window down if the effort is making them perspire, or ask them directly if you could install a window box as really, there is not enough floral distraction about town.  

Not only can you not take anyone looking so daft that you could post them to that equally crappy TV programme, 'You've Been Framed' SERIOUSLY, you can neither take your eyes off of them.  From being a complete non-entity before, with perhaps a fairly feature-less face, with the addition of a pair of fat frames, they go from the emfeebled Clark Kent to the Superhero stud Superman.  Except the effect is obviously the other way round, with the metamorphosis merging at the confusing point of Superhero-Speccy geek.   So thick are the rims of these facial asbos that you cannot help but question for a moment, whether the wearers are taking the piss.  Before you realise the level you have stooped to to actually question yourself at the behest of this type.  No, they really are for real.  Gone are the days of actual, subtle, normal glasses.  In its place are these fixtures which undoubtedly have more personality than their innocuous wearer.  KIDDO, if you are going to make a statement then follow that up with some actual gravitas, be a bit of a hero, do a little dance.  Whatever, just do something with the entrance you have made for yourself in such silly eye-wear. 

If these kids didn't just stand about with about as much charisma as a coaster, then there would be more or less, a peace-pact.  It is the formidably lazy attempt at looking like 'Something' that is - interesting, a bit kooky, a little bit 'out-there', cool, scene - all of those adjectives that bring me out in a rash, that the wearers fail in their attempt.  Topping off a dress sense inspired by your last game of Consequences, with a pair of specs that speak louder than you- speak over you infact, so in effect, you take the part of its ventriloquist dummy, is just not on.   

             

Vittles 2

When briskly pavement-gliding, reverse moonwalking or even kicking-forward at a normal, much-to-do-about-nothing type-pace, you might one day trip over something small and inconsequential afore your striding path.

Small is, infact, Big – as exampled recently by a case which made luminous much bowel-fishing, profligate word-play from the red topless’.  This being the case of the slug whose sheer terrifyingly small dimensions, and most likely similarly-sized ambition, killed a young motorist.

A modern-day, Baz Luhrmannesue remake of David vs. Goliath, Said Slugs’ sluggly-trail, like a wedding-train of ill-fate, crippled as effectively as kryptonite on superman, the line of sensors placed on a road signalling to a set of traffic lights, and tripped a short-circuit in the system which inevitably led to a def light being switched off for twenty mintues.  Unless the ensuing disaster was a pre-meditated attack in revenge for the past winters incessant road salting, then I would say that small is, at any critical divergent on the axis of time and place, as devastatingly powerful as MASSIVE, GINOURMOUS, FUCKING BIGGER THAN YOURS ANYWAY.

So small, we have it, is Big.  And also exponentially dangerous.  However, what I am describing is more striped caterpillar than hapless slug- as it is also RED the colour of DANGER and this is why, so often around town, I notice them everywhere.  I believe they are symptomatic of a litter-bugging, ‘Nay- I do not give a toss if your letters are late…By a week…If you've got any complaints, write to us’, Royal Mail Postal Service.  A band-of-brothers so far removed from the dedicated Postman Pat of yore, it is hard to reconcile that they derive from the same genealogy.  Just think, for every tacky birthday e-card you send, a non-striking postal worker, (If found- I often wonder if posties strike in order to rush off to work their second job on the London Underground, and vice-versa), somewhere, lets out a death knell.

Yes!  Now it makes some kind of sense.  It’s those little red elastic bands that don’t biodegrade isn’t it!  The red elastic bands that all our fan mail is bunched together in.  Separating your, lesser collection, from mine- which is dropped round the back to the IT department, to be sorted by a small team of Irish Travellers.  The red elastic bands, which, like self-loathing, sexually-depraved mayflies, have but one day of existence outdoors, before sucked up into the street cleaners’ chariots like helpless Noah into the mouth of the whale. (A whale that flosses)

The Disintegrator : Fires 144 elastic bands at a time

Practically as aplenty as pigeons around London, if you collected every single one seen on your daily commute and combined them into that old-skool gadget ‘Elastic-Band-Ball’, to then roll down a hill for larks, neighbouring schools and residential areas would have to be evacuated.  Best way forward in this would be to put an advert in the National Press, excluding the Daily Mail.

And so here it is.  The title of my blog.  The epitaph ‘A Red Elastic Band’ on the grave of our future generations’ ‘Green Planet’.  Each little red elastic band- the one you see, the one I see- an omnipresent emblem of our shared commonality as Mankind. 

It is also a fantastically cost-effective marketing campaign, being free.  So I am spanning some large demographic trawling nets of advertising, as that is some wide distribution.

   No need for the exertion of having to buy a silly hat and brightly coloured converse to tag up an advert in some scene shithole, like.  Hopefully scenesters wouldn’t be scene dead reading this blog.  This blog has been sprayed in anti-scenester-icide, so if they are, not to worry, then soon they will be. 

XXX 




Some ideas of what to use your red elastic band for :  


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7985359.stm


Apparently a postie gets an £80 fine is caught red-banded :


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/09/shortcuts-red-rubber-bands

Ducks who accessorize :


http://www.hippyshopper.com/2008/04/curse_of_the_po.html