Damaged stonework from Letterkenny Cathedral.

He’s carving some replacements for damaged stones in the spire of Letterkenny Cathedral (more accurately, Saint Eunan’s), and everyone in the region is familiar with the huge stone cross that towers on the other side of the street, incised with Celtic knots & tangles that have roots in pre-Christian Irish culture.  His grandfather worked on the cathedral when it was being built over a century ago, and he and his ancestors’ work is bound up with the fabric of life in this part of County Donegal.

His personal work delights in the paradoxes of mass and fluidity that are brought about when pliable materials are “turned to stone.” One piece seems to have been indented, impossibly, by the pressure of a finger. Another piece translates a scrap of twisted sheet metal, found on the beach, into unyielding marble. (Image below.)  This material, of course, can’t twist even a micron without cracking or shearing off, and the ambiguities of representing the soft with this hardest of sculptural materials has fascinated sculptors since Bernini and beyond.

Herrity is immersed in the timeless concerns of an ancient craft, with an eye and a mind shaped both by contemporary art and by enduring craft traditions. Stone carving takes an enormous amount of time. To put this considerable expenditure of time and strength into making something that borders on the absurd, like a gleaming granite and marble tissue box, results in an object that has an odd power to it, simultaneously labored and offhand casual.

Found metal shard turned to stone.

From the way Herrity talks about carving stone, you might think that weeks of patient labor were effortless and easy. By Orla’s account, he’s a driven worker by temperament, cheerfully up before dawn to get started tapping, chiseling, drilling, filing, polishing. Twenty, fifty, a few hundred hours labor on a project is no big deal, one senses, if doing the work is both your art and your pleasure. He’s as sociable and sharp-witted as anyone I know here in Ireland, but he wants to get back to work before too long. Have a look at his website.

Maybe it’s the teapot mesa horizon – I’m not sure what else ties this monoprint (mine) to George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, one of the oddest and greatest comic strips in history.  It’s what I thought of right away when it came out of the etching press, though, so I’ll let the inexplicable title stand, even though I don’t quite get it myself. I still see it, but I don’t know why I have the association. In any case, a few words on the Kat, and some loosely related thoughts she brings to mind:

(Right: One panel, c.1937) If it weren’t for Herriman’s deft touch with ink and balance, the strip’s humor, erudition, bizarre ethics, and anti-romantic antics would fall flat, I imagine. If Krazy Kat‘s straight-faced wit doesn’t connect with you, there’s no way to explain “what’s so funny.” This is generally true of art that’s worth spending some time with, maybe.  The moment of getting a joke is the whole point – the logic suddenly flips, pivoting on a word with two meanings, or something like that. If it’s explained, it’s ruined. Forever. With pictures, that moment is harder to describe,especially if there’s no joke. The mind is somehow diverted into an unfamiliar route.

Of course, much of contemporary art seems to be built primarily to support subtle explanation and text, with ambiguities and references that seem “staged” to bait and tempt critics. Conversation starters. What I’m looking for isn’t necessarily profound, and I don’t turn to Krazy Kat for philosophy, but Herriman, a sort of master tradesman of image, sparse text, and simple story, hits it on the head a lot of the time by stripping away all complication. Haiku hammer. Most of what brings it to another level lies between the lines of jokes goofy enough for a long-running newspaper comic strip.  He tells the same story practically every time, but so did Rembrandt. It’s that ink line that does it, that vividness in an artist’s gesture, whether calm, tight, or wild. To drag out the comparison from earlier, a bad joke told brilliantly is hilarious, but a great joke told badly is agonizing. Brush gesture and comic delivery are equivalent in their mysterious power to transform the ordinary.

We’re often too smart for our own good, and sensitized hand and eye know more than the mind, in their way. Willem DeKooning was a fan of Krazy Kat, I’m told, and I imagine for much the same reasons. De Kooning became an art world superstar when critics began to use his paintings to support their agendas, but in a way, his work is indefensible. Greenberg, etc., may have suggested a way in and provided some words to say, but the power of the work, really, is wordless. Explanation delights and informs, and the mind enjoys a clever verbal ride, or mine does, at least. I like to write, at times, but the core of what I know is inaccessible to text, I think.

In recent years, Krazy Kat has been “legitimized” by scholarly research and theoretical exegesis, as academia moves to colonize all extant realms of image making. Some of that writing is terrific, and sheds light, but it all relies on the gestural integrity and inverted wit of Herriman’s quick, deadline-driven comic strips. I’m sure he would laugh pretty hard if he heard about someone subverting a hermeneutics of conneoiseurship in order to disrobe the latent erotics of Krazy Kat. A different kind of nonsense. Verbal sophistication can be stupid. Sophistry.

I’m using Krazy Kat for my own purposes, of course, exaggerating Herriman’s cryptic simplicity to make a point, as I string out a riff that springs from my own self-absorbed, completely unfunny print. There’s a long history of using the Kat as a diving board into one’s own pool. An essay by ee cummings is one instance, and many others have given a nod to Krazy, like Umberto Eco, Wayne Thiebaud, Bill Watterson, Jack Kerouac, Charles Schultz, and Will Eisner. Richard Diebenkorn was a fan, which isn’t surprising, looking at his paintings. I ran into this quotes page after I started writing, and much of what’s there is better than what’s here, if you’re more interested in the Kat than in Eric’s ravings. Wikipedia has a ton of info on the blessed kitty and is a good place to start. The thing to do, though, is get a hold of a book of Herriman’s cartoons and forget everything I said, if you haven’t already. Below: a full-page strip to close with. It’s early enough to be in the public domain (1922). King Features, who owns most of the Krazy Kat copyrights, apparently has a history of coming after well-meaning websites with threats and bills. I can’t afford a lawyer. By buying a book, you give them their payoff, and you get to see the work. By buying it through my link, you give me a dime (or so), too. Please do, pal. It costs you the same either way.

The page below should give you a little of the scent of the Kat, though it predates the “classic” period of brick-throwing and persistent tropes. Get a book, through my link or from your library, so you can see the “mature” world of the Kat. Click on the image to get a slightly larger version…

Rian Kerrane‘s piece, Velvet Letters, covers two walls with an evolving tangle of letters/words that wrestles with red-flocked circles and leafy shapes. Visitors add their own significant words and phrases to a rolling list, and the new thoughts and sounds get composed and installed as the run of the show continues. Labor intensive interactive installation. If all of Letterkenny gets a word or two in, the wall will be a highly-figured near-black with the texture of text and its intersections. There’s still some space, so bring your words.

My short movie looks great on a framed monitor lent by the Letterkenny Arts Centre. (See this previous post for an even-more-abstracted variant of what’s being shown.)  The show is open to view right now. A wide range of people have come through and are amazed, puzzled, charmed, or caught off guard by Letterkenny’s most peculiar currently-showing movie. Everyone I run into seems to have something to say, which can’t be bad, and most seem to be productively befuddled, which is perhaps how the human mind evolves. It’s how mine does. I like this writhing flick. Hope you do. Stop by the opening and talk to us, and to the exhibition’s adventurous curator, Seamus Quinn (pictured).

Letters Home

This record is one remarkable artifact from a distinct group of like-minded musicians that has assembled and disbanded in various configurations for about 40 years now. Those various groups, like Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, Art Bears, Cassiber, Skeleton Crew, Naked City and Massacre, are too diverse to categorize, ranging from giddy, wry pop tunes, to ear-splitting maelstrom, to complex, variously dissonant and delightful orchestrations, laced with some of the most sensitive, intricate group improvisation that has yet occurred on Earth.  The threads that link them are the distinctive voices of each of the players, and what I hear on this disc is shaped by my own ear’s history with this circulating cast of characters.

There are several guests on Letters Home: Robert Wyatt’s voice always moves me, in practically any context. Dagmar Krause and Sally Potter’s voices are, as ever, agile, lovely, fierce. Yes, a fierce album, for all its humor and bounce. This isn’t the disc to put on for the hot tub or the massage table.

The core of this particular group consists of Cutler (percussion), Lindsay Cooper (bassoon, sopranino and alto saxophone, piano, other keyboards), and Zeena Parkins (harp, prepared and electric harps, accordion, E-Bowed
guitar). Other guest artists: Bill Gilonis on bass & guitar, and Phil Minton, singing. As I understand it, Lindsay Cooper composed the score to Cutler’s poetic text, and she makes this peculiar instrumentation sound inevitable and essential.

Chris Cutler’s lyrics are shrewd, heated, and often silly, with political roots on the anticapitalist Left. (“I nailed a banknote…to a tree. But it did not…nourish me.”) Playful, angry. It’s not that Cutler is in any way the center of this continually transient, ever-persistent musical community,though. (He does run Recommended Records, a crucial outlet.) He’s a brilliant musician, an articulate voice, and happens to be my starting point here, because I pulled his book, “File Under Popular” off the shelf for the first time in a while. More on that in a later post. Get a copy and read it to prepare for my upcoming lecture.

If one thing ties together the many groups I’m putting under my leaky umbrella, it’s a sense of close listening, criticism, collaboration, and the creative tension of sharp, agile minds, each with their own idea of where things should go. Argumentative, respectful, thoughtful community, with various ensembles splitting, merging, collaborating, and performing together over the last 4 decades throughout Europe, the US, Japan, and diverse elsewheres. Ego, critical community, sure, but on the whole, this is the sound of smart, skillful fun. Play on the the highest possible level. Wish I was on that stage, too, was my feeling at many shows. What joy, when it all works.

In the best examples of this vast body of work, audible tensions are sauteed into formally graceful wholes, and Chris Cutler and his various musical allies have made dozens of works that reward repeated listening. There’s nothing else quite like it, and this area of music never took categorization all that well. You could find it filed under jazz, rock, post-rock, progressive, avant-garde, pop, experimental, “downtown”…  None of these really work, though. It’s music that deliberately invites in the whole history of innovative composition and improvisation, from Weill and Eisler to Berg, Varese, Gesualdo. Ligeti, Hendrix, Messaien, Nino Rota, Roland Kirk,, and, oh, I don’t know, really. Henry Cowell, one might suspect.

All of this is audible here and there, but their main influences are, in the moment of playing, each other. You can hear them hearing and responding. I’m at a loss to describe Cutler’s intricate, staggered layers of rhythm, the hilarious fervency of some of these songs, the penetrating ache of others. Lindsay Cooper’s carefully honed, odd-shaped melodies.

These (broadly speaking again) are musicians who know music and strive to steer it into unfamiliar territory whenever possible. For the most part, they’ve evolved their work onstage, in settings where you’re allowed to have a beverage and don’t need to dress up too much. I heard Fred Frith’s First String Quartet premiere at the old Knitting Factory (NY), and the ensemble had to wait for a few drunk persons to quiet down before they could begin.

I don’t know, but I’m thinking that the persistence of this community must have a lot to do with the ties and loyalties formed over years in diverse living rooms and kitchens by Henry Cow and transient affiliates as they relentlessly toured Europe. Most of the people I’d put under my umbrella collaborated or consorted with the Cow in one way or another, even if they never “joined.” People who’ve lived together for a long time under pressure have a bond, and in a tour van that rarely stops for long, people get to know each other better than they’d like, perhaps.

I love this record, and it was the one that started me writing, but I like their first, Sirens and Silences,  just as well. Both are included on a Compilation (from Recommended Records), and since it costs about the same as Letters Home alone, you might as well get them both in one.  I might actually start you off with Henry Cow, the mother of much of this, if I were to prescribe a programme.

If this is your first visit to this broad area of music, Slapp Happy is also a delightful way in, with sophisticated pop songs that get both funnier and funnier, and darker, as you gradually catch all the lyrics on repeated listening. Shimmering voices, cutting voices. The latter part of this disc (another compilation of two albums) gets weightier, edgy, less bouncy, but it maintains a coy wit even amidst moody reflection on serious illness. You’ll also need to listen to Robert Wyatt in depth, as well as various Fred Frith projects, but let’s save those topics for later.

If you’re interested enough that you want to actually hear one of these recordings, please do use one of my links. Writing is hard, and you will, in effect, be leaving me a tip. I’ve got more time and care into this site than any waiter in your life ever gave to your table. In any case, write a few words below so I know you came by, so I know there’s someone in the room with me. Thanks…

The version of “Old Tongue” that just opened at ArtWorks is too quick and detailed to come across on the web, but by trying to strip it down for compression, I came up with a very different version, one that leaves recognizable imagery mostly behind for a flattish world of peeling and twisting. If you’re in Ireland, it’s up now, in Letterkenny, but I won’t be there until next week. Hope you like this variation.

(Update: I’ve arrived. If you didn’t arrive here via my home page, click here for more info on this show, Rian Kerrane‘s piece, Velvet Letters, curator Seamus Quinn, and the opening reception, which is coming up in a few days as I write. Here is another link, to my description of Old Tongue, my contribution to the exhibition [with a composite image].)

Some kind of Gene Wolfe parlor of tarnished escutcheons, faceless poise, and rotting velvet, with remnants of ruling families maintaining the procedures of dignity as any trace of distinction and inbred purpose fade. Ancestral identity becomes mere cashflow and costume. Vast, dim, cobwebbed atriums (atria?), occasional letters to sign, from estate lawyers. Biscuits and the sherry bottle. Cuddling with grandfather’s trophies and certificates.

While never straying from the work that is emerging under his hand, the artist also never stops observing himself. To possess this kind of self-consciousness is to no longer be a simple artisan.

A return to painting is not a return to tradition in order to resurrect the forms and tastes that were amply expressed by the ancients. It is rather a return to discover the remaining and far from exhausted possibilities and to unearth a personal means of expression.

A return to painting means to paint where one cannot paint, to paint what one has already painted, , and to begin painting anew.

A return to painting means to return to the point where modernism began more than a century ago, and find another path.

Part of the charm of this book comes from the fact that it’s a compilation of thoughts from Gao’s notebooks, written for himself , then later shared and translated. It’s certainly not academic, either in its broad tone or in its sincerity. He’s not trying to convince an audience – he’s trying to inspire himself, and remind himself of core beliefs. In his own private notebooks, there’s no need to provide specific evidence for his attitudes, so one reads between the lines. Looking at this book again always reminds me to confound my own unexamined rules and habits, reminds me to remember that my own whole impetus here has to do with those moments of clear vision that art-making brings about, sometimes. That form and vision have some real substance,  that wisdom is still worth pursuing in a jaded world, and that depth is perhaps possible, though it may well be a laughing matter.  Gao deliberately tries to bring some of the tone, the fluid ambition, and the spiritual intent of “the ancients” into the present. For more about Gao’s paintings and biography, have a look here.

If this sounds like a book you’d like to have, please do use my link (goes to Amazon) to order a new or used copy, and they’ll send me some tiny part of what you pay, though it won’t change the price you pay by even one penny.

Several monoprints from the same intaglio plate.

Each Wednesday (Woden’s Day) night this Spring, when possible, I would go over to the studio and make prints. I had several etched plates lying about, each of them suggestive of image, while not quite readable without interpretation. The ways in which an intaglio plate can be inked, and stroked into art, are infinite. Each of these shuffling images is a “reading” of the same etched printing plate. You can see the traces of a common origin, if you care to pause and look for a moment. If this is no interest, if this kind of transformation isn’t your cup of tea, well, then, by all means, you’d best move along and not waste any more of your time here. I like this kind of thing, though, and if you do, too, don’t be shy about leaving a comment.  A moment’s attention means a lot to me, in a busy world.

“Old Tongue

(Video installation for “Letters & Speechlessness” at ArtWorks, Letterkenney, Ireland, July 3-30, 2010, 7 minute loop, tiny video, 2010)