Liminal

This was stencilled on the ground near the university in Vienna. Damn students.
Did I cross the line? But of course. I’m still processing my feelings on pushing this particular boundary.

Achtung Goldilocks

Having seen enough Renaissance art to stuff a turkey in Italy and Hungary, I decided to set my sights on the twentieth century in Vienna. I worried that I was losing my appetite for Modernism. Something in the gold leaf might have addled my brain: chubby bewinged putti kept fluttering into my dreams and drawing haloes around you all as I slept. St Sebastien featured not infrequently as did the heads of Holofernes and John the Baptist. Hmm. I was considering turfing all my notes on twentieth century avant-gardes, buying some brown shoes and finding a neglected Renaissance artist to rehabilitate via ‘an adventurous, highly creative’ biography. Thankfully, this will not come to pass: the stinky, smoggy century has been redeemed. I’ve gorged myself on Dada and Expressionism and Bauhaus and Fluxus and PopArt and the Secession and, lord Almighty, die Unheimlich; the uncanny lurks under every café table in Vienna. Hurrah ! I was completely enlivened by an exhibition called Traum und Trauma, replete with broken dolls, evil children, creepy mutated butterflies, an awful chamber full of old prams tied together with fire-hoses and the obligatory installation with strobe lights and low pitch white noise. Ah, repression, depravity, inner landscapes, perversions of innocence, alles in Ordnung. I was disturbed, I was comforted. I had a Cindy Sherman moment and took a photo of myself against a sickly yellow background.I call it Untitled #77 (Wir haben kein platz für eine Tischtennisplatte).

Next stop, the Freud Museum.

Keeping it real

Walking down the street in Györ, I came across what I took to be a challenging and witty piece of public sculpture. Thoughts about the progressive attitude of Mitteleuropean municipal bodies towards contemporary installation art instantly flittered through my head.

I looked closer, however, and realised that we were not solidifying metaphors for the purposes of art but for those of Love and Real Life.

The heart is composed of hundreds of small padlocks onto which the names of lovers are inscribed. As far as I could tell, these locks weren’t being shackled onto a sickly pink chain in any kind of ironic fashion. I felt like I was back in Verona. The keys have been turned on an unbreakable contract and chucked into the river, kind of like a more comfortable chastity belt. How romantic! This padlock symbolises our relationship? Lock it in, Eddie! Cynical, moi?

And thus we see, true love conquers all! Except maybe bolt-cutters.

Cow, Catriona, Corsica

I'm still not quite sold on the Cow Parade. Yes, it is the world's largest public art project. Yes, sculpture is demystified by presenting such whimsical bovines. They invite interaction, do they not? And yet? I find myself yearning for putti. Myself, I have never had too many qualms about posing with public artworks. Anyway, here pose I with a cow decked out in Corsican regalia. If I look a little strained, it is due to the effort of trying to come to some witty, insightful, critical conclusions on the cows.

Nonetheless, this photo provides me with the occasion to note the following.
1. I am catching a ferry to Corsica tomorrow. Not only will this ferry take me from Marseilles to Bastia, it will allow me to indulge my Mediterranean pirate/stowaway/sailor fantasies.
2. I am travelling to Bastia and from thence to Porte Leccia and Lozzi to go woofing for another ten days.
3. It is more than likely that I will not be online, updating this blog, answering emails, procrastinating on Facebook, pursuing random Google searches until close to the end of August, at which point I will be in either Sardinia, Genoa, Naples or Genoa, depending on how strenuous I am feeling, how strenuous my woofing interlude has been, and, of course, the whims of the tides and winds.

Northern Lights

I betook myself to the North of England to see the Andy Goldsworthy retrospective showing at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There are many reasons why this is a journey that should be made by anybody stuck on the narrow Isle of Blight in the next six months. Let me enumerate just a few reasons why - apart from the obvious: that it’s a park full of sculpture.

A Ripping Excursion
A visit to the park from London provides the occasion for a jolly trip through ye olde English countryside. Look! Charming towers poking out of the centre of bosky villages! And over there, ‘tis a man wearing gumboots! I caught a train to Wakefield (see The Vicar of ⎯., Goldsmith, Oliver), wandered around the cathedral precinct and then jumped on a bus to West Bretton before tramping my way down back-lanes and over stiles to the park. Of course the busstop was located on Sycamore Lane! Of course we passed through Crigglestone and Kettlethorpe! Of course I’ve edited out the skagbot teens marauding through the town! Of course I turned inwards as the bus drove through stock footage of industrial parkland!

Meeting Northerners
I do like friendly locals and the locals oop country are particularly friendly. All day, I delivered my inner monologue in a northern accent. I became especially enamoured of a bus-driver who heartily welcomed me to the civilised lands of the north, congratulating me on getting away from the sink of ignorance that is London. Said gent was a collector of militaria and had a question about the word ‘Melbourne’ mysteriously engraved on the back of a badge in his collection. We got along like a house on fire; before he dropped me off, he showed me photos of his spare room which was full of dummies dressed up in old military uniforms. Ace.

Authentic Countryside
The YSP lies in the grounds of an ancestral pile – Bretton House – which is still being used for farming. This means mud and animals and fences and stiles and dung. The well-informed art-lovers sensibly negotiated the terrain in gumboots. Myself, wearing Birkenstocks, I got oozily close to the earth of my birthplace. Not only do flocks of amiable sheep and cows graze on hillsides and rub up against plinths, wild ducks, geese, squirrels, and, I’d wager, porcupines, dwell in the nature reserve which cuts through it all. I will never again think of Henry Moore without hearing a gentle bleating in the background.

Aaaart
And, of course, an enormous and quite fabulous indoor-outdoor exhibition of the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Sculpture, archival drawings, photographs. Here are Striding Arches, en route to Cairnhead Forest, Dumfriesshire.