Bob Westley
  • Blog
  • Preoccupations
  • Stockroom
  • Untitled

Give it a five.........

10/6/2016

0 Comments

 
Well I spent last evening in the company of Julian Barnes, and much to my surprise I had a really good time. 'Keeping an Eye Open', it's a seriously good read, he writes about art with real insight. In fact if I could forget the Corsham stuff he might persuade me to look again at Howard Hodgkin, not completely sure about that.
Picture
So Tony Cragg has a new show at the Lisson Gallery. They are truly real things, these things, proper things, things of substance, space occupiers, gravity rooted, high tech., seriously clever things of wonder. There should always be a little wonder, there is wonder in Rodin's 'Age of Bronze', there is wonder in Hearst's 'Mother and Child Divided', and here there is a lot of wonder, and as I won't be making a trip to visit them then I will have to wonder on. I shall wonder how they are made, what they are made of, who made them, where were they made and why? You see I should love them, sitting there in their sculptural glory, I crave the substantial, the concrete, the floor huggers, some days I could die for a plinth! But there is an awful lot of them here, I suppose this is really Tony Cragg's Autumn Collection, can we shop on line?
 Lets return to Julian, Keeping an Eye Open, chapter 15, So Does It Become Art......... 'The tests are simple, does it interest the eye, excite the brain, spur the mind to reflection and move the heart, and is an apparent level of skill involved? Much currently fashionable art bothers only the eye and briefly the brain, but it fails to engage the mind and the heart. It may, to use the old dichotomy, be beautiful, but it is rarely true to any significant depth.' We know where Julian is coming from, I always thought pastel mohair sweaters so that shows you what I know, brilliant, and there's a lot more but you will have to go and read it, I'm done quoting. So that's one the for eye, two for the brain, three for the mind, four for the heart and five for the skill, so how do we score the Cragg show, is it a solid three or a shaky four, lets look at the scoreboard! But that won't do, it's too easy to make a crack, and we really need all the help we can get, pick up the Guardian and you will have Mr Jones crushing Gormley one week and beatifying Tracy the next, you could wonder if you were on your arras or your buttress. I am going to thank Julian and tick all the boxes with this brilliant five.
Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    BOB WESTLEY
    Picture
    ​AGED AND AWKWARD
    bob_westley@hotmail.com

    Archives

    February 2022
    January 2022
    August 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • Preoccupations
  • Stockroom
  • Untitled