I've been playing the new pc game Rome: Total War for the past few days, though I have barely even scratched the surface of it. Absolutely brilliant graphics that make you feel that you are there, standing on a hill with legions around you and a horde of barbarians about to sweep out of the woods and cut you to pieces.
Not so easy to find time for a blog with that going on. And it certainly takes one's mind off the relatively bloodless struggle to get up the steps at Barons Court. Now there's a good name for a game. Baron's Court, where you can command nasty armour-clad thugs who beat up peasants, intimidate bishops and monks, defy the King and terrorise your equally unpleasant neighbours in their chilly castles.
If it wasn't for Rome, the new long awaited version of Empire and the updated version of Pirates (God what a great gaming Xmas this is going to be), I'd be tempted to design it myself.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Friday, December 03, 2004
Art and artists
Travellers on the London Underground are bombarded with images. Adverts, tube maps, the newspapers of your fellow commuters, and from time to time "Art". Currently on show at Gloucester Road there are huge posters made from photographs of zebras in the snow by "Italian born artist Paola Pivi", as the Transport for London website describes her.
These are pretty good images and enhance the travelling experience but this sort of thing always gets me thinking about the meaning of the words art and artist.
Forget the cliché about "I don't know about art but I know what I like". Everyone knows something about art. Or at least they do if they accept my definition of art, which is as follows: [clears throat, prepares well modulated voice]
Art transcends the medium from which it is produced for the purpose of stimulating the senses and imagination of the person experiencing it.
Transcends the medium means that something is created that wasn't there before and you cease to be aware of the raw materials. Thus
So what then is an Artist? By my definition it is someone who produces Art. That was easy, was it not? But it is not the currently accepted meaning. In today's parlance anyone who wishes to be an artist is an artist. You just say "I am an artist" and what I do is "art". And if you can find a rich mug like Lord Saatchi who believes you then you are on to a nice little earner.
This is not a trivial point. If someone says they are a policeman then it means they work for a police force. If they are a doctor then they have medical qualifications. If they are bus driver they they drive buses. But Artists define themselves. "I am an artist and what I do is art". Thus Tracey Emin can display her (unmade) bed as art because she is an artist. She didn't make the sheets or construct the mattress. She presents the bed as it is - there is no transcendence of the raw materials, we are simply shown the raw materials. This is not art, it is exhibitionism and therefore she in my eyes is merely an exhibitor. Ditto most modern artists who think that taking objects made by someone else and displaying them qualifies them as artists and their exhibits as works of art.
I blame it on Duchamps and his stupid toilet bowl of 1917. I've got a toilet. Is it Art? If I put it outside my house and stood there holding a sign that said "I am an Artist and this is Art", would that make it art? What of the poll of 500 "arts figures" announced yesterday naming Fountain the most influential work in modern art. Actually this does not mean any of them like it or even regard it as art - but they believe that everyone else does.
Actually it is we who are the fools. We should laugh at exhibitors and disdain their works. And we should insist on real art, on things that have been made to delight our senses and make us think, on things that require some real effort and imagination by the creator, on things that tell us something about the creator and the feelings towards the work.
So, what then of the zebras displayed so dramatically against the warmly lit mellow brickwork of Gloucester Road? Photography always presents a problem when judging artistic endeavour because it always transcends the medium (unless the photographer deliberately blows up the picture to show the grains or pixels from which the image is composed). So you have to ask if the picture moves you, changes your emotions, conveys an idea that remains when you turn your eyes elsewhere? I do like the zebra pictures but they fail the test. Its just a gimmick, putting two tropical animals onto a snowy mountain top so that a photographer can indulge a whim. How about dropping la Pivi onto a mountain and photographing her as she looks round bewildered, slips down a sheer slope and cries out for help. Now that would be art!
These are pretty good images and enhance the travelling experience but this sort of thing always gets me thinking about the meaning of the words art and artist.
Forget the cliché about "I don't know about art but I know what I like". Everyone knows something about art. Or at least they do if they accept my definition of art, which is as follows: [clears throat, prepares well modulated voice]
Art transcends the medium from which it is produced for the purpose of stimulating the senses and imagination of the person experiencing it.
Transcends the medium means that something is created that wasn't there before and you cease to be aware of the raw materials. Thus
- in painting, you see the picture and not the blobs of paint and the surface of the canvas
- in music you hear the sounds rather than the scrapings of the bows, the banging of fingers on keys or the raw breathing of the singers (Bob Dylan may a special exception here)
- in sculpture you admire the object, the shape and the texture. You don't think oh look there is a lump of stone with a hole in it.
- in film you believe in the characters and the situation on screen. You don't hear the film scraping in the camera sprockets, the sounds of the editor snipping bits out, the director shouting at the actors, see the sets wobbling or the makeup flying around.
- in ceramics you see a finished piece, be it a decorative vase or just a peanut bowl. You don't see a lump of raw clay with a hole in it.
So what then is an Artist? By my definition it is someone who produces Art. That was easy, was it not? But it is not the currently accepted meaning. In today's parlance anyone who wishes to be an artist is an artist. You just say "I am an artist" and what I do is "art". And if you can find a rich mug like Lord Saatchi who believes you then you are on to a nice little earner.
This is not a trivial point. If someone says they are a policeman then it means they work for a police force. If they are a doctor then they have medical qualifications. If they are bus driver they they drive buses. But Artists define themselves. "I am an artist and what I do is art". Thus Tracey Emin can display her (unmade) bed as art because she is an artist. She didn't make the sheets or construct the mattress. She presents the bed as it is - there is no transcendence of the raw materials, we are simply shown the raw materials. This is not art, it is exhibitionism and therefore she in my eyes is merely an exhibitor. Ditto most modern artists who think that taking objects made by someone else and displaying them qualifies them as artists and their exhibits as works of art.
I blame it on Duchamps and his stupid toilet bowl of 1917. I've got a toilet. Is it Art? If I put it outside my house and stood there holding a sign that said "I am an Artist and this is Art", would that make it art? What of the poll of 500 "arts figures" announced yesterday naming Fountain the most influential work in modern art. Actually this does not mean any of them like it or even regard it as art - but they believe that everyone else does.
Actually it is we who are the fools. We should laugh at exhibitors and disdain their works. And we should insist on real art, on things that have been made to delight our senses and make us think, on things that require some real effort and imagination by the creator, on things that tell us something about the creator and the feelings towards the work.
So, what then of the zebras displayed so dramatically against the warmly lit mellow brickwork of Gloucester Road? Photography always presents a problem when judging artistic endeavour because it always transcends the medium (unless the photographer deliberately blows up the picture to show the grains or pixels from which the image is composed). So you have to ask if the picture moves you, changes your emotions, conveys an idea that remains when you turn your eyes elsewhere? I do like the zebra pictures but they fail the test. Its just a gimmick, putting two tropical animals onto a snowy mountain top so that a photographer can indulge a whim. How about dropping la Pivi onto a mountain and photographing her as she looks round bewildered, slips down a sheer slope and cries out for help. Now that would be art!
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
London's Olympic Bid - Just say NO
Now don't get me wrong. I admire athletes and I enjoy watching the Olympics. I hate it that the competitors have to be in national teams and if I was in charge I would abolish national anthems, team dress and the medals tables. But that is by the by. I have two very sound reasons for being against London's bid to host the games in 2012 that relate directly to my status as a Ruislip Commuter.
First, if London Underground cannot cope now with a normal daily load, how on earth can it cope with the huge numbers that will be traveling from the centre to Stratford? We already know that the infrastructure is inadequate. When the Dome opened on New Years Eve 1999, many of the audience - an invited audience, not your usual paying customers, were corralled into tube stations and holding areas for up to 3 hours because the transport to get them to the Dome wasn't there. And that was just one night. The Olympics is what? three weeks plus the ParaOlympics?
The response will be to switch resources into servicing the lines and the bus routes to the Games. And this means a worse service for the rest of us because there are only so many tube drivers and trains to go round, and if roads are closed to non-Olympic traffic to help the buses then the traffic will spill over and jam up the rest of London.
Second, and worse, is the cost of the Games. Who is going to pay for them? The one thing we know for sure is that they will cost way more than anyone estimates and the income will be less. Maybe the UK Government will fund it but if Gordon Brown is still at the Treasury or at Number 10 then they will probably wash their hands and say it is London's bid. Ken won't care because he won't be mayor by then. And the overtaxed and undersubsidised taxpayers of London will get the bill. And those who use public transport will get another because how else will the cost of the special transport services laid on be paid for?
So in a sentence we get the misery of the Games and the cost of the Games in return for the dubious privilege of paying a whacking great amount for a ticket to see one or two events live. And don't tell me about the benefits of redeveloping Lea Valley. There are plenty of areas that could do with the cash and the long term benefits would be vastly greater than plonking down some sports facilities in a dump that nobody goes to now and nobody will wish to once the Games are over. I refer you once again, Ladies and Gentlemen of jury, to the so-called Millenium Dome. Do you visit North Greenwich now? Would you if somebody paid you? No. Nor would I. Unless they paid a lot.
Stuff the bid. Take those offensive stickers out of our tube trains. Let the French have it. Bon Chance, Jacques.
First, if London Underground cannot cope now with a normal daily load, how on earth can it cope with the huge numbers that will be traveling from the centre to Stratford? We already know that the infrastructure is inadequate. When the Dome opened on New Years Eve 1999, many of the audience - an invited audience, not your usual paying customers, were corralled into tube stations and holding areas for up to 3 hours because the transport to get them to the Dome wasn't there. And that was just one night. The Olympics is what? three weeks plus the ParaOlympics?
The response will be to switch resources into servicing the lines and the bus routes to the Games. And this means a worse service for the rest of us because there are only so many tube drivers and trains to go round, and if roads are closed to non-Olympic traffic to help the buses then the traffic will spill over and jam up the rest of London.
Second, and worse, is the cost of the Games. Who is going to pay for them? The one thing we know for sure is that they will cost way more than anyone estimates and the income will be less. Maybe the UK Government will fund it but if Gordon Brown is still at the Treasury or at Number 10 then they will probably wash their hands and say it is London's bid. Ken won't care because he won't be mayor by then. And the overtaxed and undersubsidised taxpayers of London will get the bill. And those who use public transport will get another because how else will the cost of the special transport services laid on be paid for?
So in a sentence we get the misery of the Games and the cost of the Games in return for the dubious privilege of paying a whacking great amount for a ticket to see one or two events live. And don't tell me about the benefits of redeveloping Lea Valley. There are plenty of areas that could do with the cash and the long term benefits would be vastly greater than plonking down some sports facilities in a dump that nobody goes to now and nobody will wish to once the Games are over. I refer you once again, Ladies and Gentlemen of jury, to the so-called Millenium Dome. Do you visit North Greenwich now? Would you if somebody paid you? No. Nor would I. Unless they paid a lot.
Stuff the bid. Take those offensive stickers out of our tube trains. Let the French have it. Bon Chance, Jacques.
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