Mrs Slocum - Are You Being Served ?

by Gregor Stronach

Gregor Stronach has yet to discover the joys of de-worming.  This was first published at http://www.rumandmonkey.com

Picasso's Weeping Woman - 1937

A tickle by Gregor Stronach

I’ll be frank about this… I’m not an art lover. Sure, I can appreciate a nice photograph from time to time – especially if it’s of me, and even more so if I’m doing something really cool and dangerous, like riding a motorcycle or picking my nose.

But when it comes to understanding art, I’m hopeless. So in an attempt to get my head around it, I’ve been thinking about it more and more – how does it work? Why do people spend their entire lives beavering away like morons and drones on a single canvas that they’ll probably cut to pieces in a drunken rage at four in the morning in the middle of winter because they’ve broken up with their partner and she’s taken the cat and moved interstate and she was the only one who understood me and I don’t think I can keep living without her. Or something…

So let’s work through this together, shall we? Let’s explore the world of ‘art’ and see if we can’t piece together the greatest puzzle of them all… what the fuck is art? And, more importantly, what the fuck has it got to do with me?

I can answer the first question right away: If you see an object, and you don’t know what it is or why it’s there, it’s probably art. But the second question… that’s the clincher, and it’s a question that anyone who has ever been subjected to art should ask themselves.

Painting.

I’ll admit to having loved it as a child, but painting these days leaves me cold. I struggle to apply a single block of colour to a household wall, let alone forge any meaningful, or even discernible, images in a mish-mash of flesh tones and bright primary pigments upon a canvas stretched as tightly as my nerves.

So I’m at a loss to understand even the basics of it. Sure, if the artist is going for that whole hyper-realism thing, then it’s easy to figure out what they’re saying with their work: “I have too much time on my hands and I’m too fucking cheap to buy a camera…”

But when it comes to abstract stuff – you know, those crazed impressionists or expressionists or whatever the hell they were calling themselves… I just don’t get it. I’ve had someone try to explain it to me in the past. “Look at the intensity of the brush strokes in this work,” they said. It was a large canvas, and I’m not sure which of the brush strokes they were specifically referring to, but having been left behind – hopelessly left behind, at that – within the first 20 seconds of the lesson, I let my mind wander.

As my eyes happened upon a rather portly gentleman who was ‘admiring’ a painting a few feet away, I decided that by imitating him – adopting his poses and mannerisms – I might at least look like I was appreciating the paintings in the proper way. Thus, after ten minutes of almost imperceptible frowning and some fairly serious beard-stroking, my teacher proclaimed “That’s it! You really look like you’re understanding this! Excellent! Let’s move on to the really abstract stuff now…” I nearly died.

I did get to see one thing that amazed me, though – a painting called Blue Poles, by some jerk with the amusing name of Pollock. Apparently the Australian National Gallery forked out the GDP of Kenya for this painting, and as far as I could tell, it looks like some madman has thrown paint on a canvas, attached a ridiculous price tag and waited for an over-zealous public servant with the keys to the treasury and severe myopia to wander in and buy it. It sums up the world of painting for me – overpriced, and overburdened by sympathetic souls. If ever people were making millions doing something that I can look at and say, “Jesus, even I can do that…” it’s painting.

But it’s not just the fact that Pollock’s Blue Poles leaves me none the wiser about art – the idea of a government shelling out millions of dollars for paint splashed randomly on a canvas makes me shudder like a shitting dog.

Sculpture

It was my dad who told me the secret to good sculpture – many years ago, I told him that I wanted to carve myself a large elephant, but that I needed his help. His advice was invaluable…he told me that if I wanted to carve an elephant, I should get myself a lump of concrete, making sure that the concrete is slightly larger than the elephant I want to create. Then, I was to get myself a hammer and chisel, assess the block of stone, and then simply knock off the bits that didn’t look like an elephant.

He’s lucky I didn’t start knocking off all the bits of him that did look like an elephant. That task I left to my mother. Hence, my dad is still a ‘work in progress’.

But I digress… I can see the benefit of some sculpture. It can be, and frequently is, quite rude. Some of the most famous sculptures of all time are pretty much just giant marble naked guys, or large marble women with ample, dimpled buttocks and vacant expressions on their faces. It’s interesting – given the oeuvre of the predominant artists of the day, we now expect that most art containing largish women or men with tiny penises will arrive in the form of sculpted marble.

These days, with the penchant of artists to use hyper-skinny crack-whore models, it would make better economic sense to use marble now – after all, there’s a lot less of the model to carve, keeping the raw material costs at a reasonable level. But no – they burnt money carving fat chicks out of beautiful stone 300 years ago, and these days they prefer to photograph the skinny ones. Sometimes humans confuse me.

Photography

Now this one I can nearly understand – except that most of the photography exhibitions I’ve ever been to have been catastrophically boring. Yes, I have a working knowledge of taking pictures – no journalist worth his salt doesn’t know how to take a half-decent photo from time to time – but when it comes to photography as ‘art’ rather than photography as ‘work’, I’m stumped.

Having been to see quite a few galleries whose walls were lined with photos, I can say this – if I see one more “single tree in an otherwise empty field with storm clouds gathered ominously behind it” photo, I’ll find the photographer and give him a Canon Colonoscopy. With the number of digital cameras being sold every day around the world, I reckon it’s a fair bet that there isn’t a single thing on the planet that hasn’t been photographed.

And so we’re left with another branch of photography that I truly despise – photos that rely on the inherent incongruent nature of their subjects. The whole ‘Oh look! It’s a woman wearing an octopus as hair!” or “Check it out! It’s an old man taking a shit in the middle of a freeway!” is more annoying than confronting, more patronising than educational, and ultimately entirely fruitless. Surely we have better things to do with our time than dress people in seafood or watch old people crap. If I’d wanted to do either of those things, I’d go back to work in a nursing home.

Film

I’m absolutely sure that whoever it was that decided to market filmmaking as an art form was attempting an early form of eugenics. “Let’s gather all of the world’s insufferable wankers into one place – with a bit of luck, the building they’re in will collapse and we can all be happy…”

I’ve met a few filmmakers in my time. Hell, I’ve been a filmmaker. It’s fucked. How people can make a living out of it, I don’t know – anything that’s utterly unenjoyable as a hobby has simply got to be the worst job in the world.

See, filmmaking is a horrifyingly vampiric art form. Once a movie is made, it’s there forever. Artists, prior to film, used to produce several versions of the same piece, each time improving upon it. Quite the reverse is the case with film – remakes are invariably shit, and sequels (and to an even greater extent, prequels) are universally banal and awful.

If it were up to me, I think that filmmakers should be licensed, like dogs. There would be a fairly strenuous initial period of testing and retesting, and anyone who falls back on the excuse that their film is ‘a metaphor’ should immediately be banned from ever making one again. Films are not metaphors. Films are a series of still pictures shown in rapid succession to give the impression of movement. Yes, they tell stories. Sometimes those stories are even entertaining. But most of the time they’re just self-indulgent whining about appallingly boring subjects.

Except when they’re blowing up entire buildings – that’s pretty cool.

Digital Art

It’s a fact of life that when a new technology or medium is invented, someone somewhere will look at it and think to themselves “wow… I can make some serious art with that.” In that sense, most artists are akin to the more prolific stoners in society – you know the type. They can be heard uttering phrases like “That television would make an excellent bong” from the depths of the couch, the morning after the welfare cheque has cleared.

And that’s why, all of a sudden, there’s been an explosion of electronic art. A number of reasonably intelligent nerdlings discovered that computers can be used to alter photographs, and the world was beset by Digital Art.

These electron jockeys, like all ‘New Artists’, consider themselves to be cutting edge – at the forefront of the collective psyche, producing tantalising works of art that end up on T-Shirts, or as Desktops. In terms of audience reach, they’re probably on the right track – but it’s highly unlikely that critical acclaim is around the corner.

You see, the invention of the internet has drastically reduced one famous artist’s prediction of fifteen minutes of fame to somewhere between two and three minutes – in essence, the lifespan of a digital artist at the top of his game could quite easily be slotted into the space between the sport and the weather on the nightly news.

Performance Art

There’s a special place in Hell reserved for all performance artists. I will spare you the brutally obvious diatribe on the topic of mimes… it’s so fucking fashionable to hate them these days that they’re in danger of becoming popular again with the avant garde, and we could yet see a revival. But that’s nothing a large, deep hole and a sign reading ‘Free Mime Food’ won’t fix.

The performance arts I particularly loathe are the ones where people intentionally hurt themselves to make a point – protest art, like protest music, is usually extremely tedious, insufferable for any onlooker and, for the most part, a colossal waste of everyone’s time. I cannot see a single redeeming feature in any activity that sets out to fix any of the world’s numerous ills, and usually ends with the sounds of sirens and the scampering footsteps of frightened co-conspirators as they flee into the night.

The problem with performance art is that, in these modern times, it has to be extreme to be noticed. Life was easier for artists in the 1960s – all they needed to do was take their clothes off and they’d be famous. But if Yoko Ono’s caterwauling and public nudity were thought-provoking and daring back then, today they’re limitlessly passé – performance artists have evolved.

The best example I know of is a chap called Mike Parr, who insists on inflicting prodigious amounts of pain on himself to make ‘statements’ about ‘issues’, thus forming ‘art’ that makes people ‘think’. Having seen him do his thing – I watched him having his face stitched up and then wire himself up to a potent source of electricity, inviting people to visit his website and press a button that would deliver a shock to his already brutalised form – I have to say that I applaud the man’s stamina. But that’s about it.

I’m sorry to say that it’s my dim opinion that this man, and anyone like him, is a 24-carat gold-plated fool. I refuse to be impressed by people hurting themselves to make a point. I can see no difference between them and people like Steve O and the lads from Jackass… except at least the guys from Jackass aren’t pretending to save the world.

Writing

All writers are fools. It’s a simple, inalienable fact. I know, because I am one. We sit down and pen missives on whatever topic strikes us (if we’re lucky) or whatever we’re told to write (if we work for someone else), and all that matters is making sure that each piece, or chapter, has a beginning, a middle and an end.

It’s actually debatable, in my opinion, that writing is not an art – it’s more of a craft. Although to me, the word ‘craft’ brings to mind small tubs of paste, ice cream sticks, tiny tubes of glitter with lids that won’t come off and a box of 64 brightly coloured Derwent pencils, the more popular colours being immediately apparent because the pencil is only half as long as its less-potent neighbour. Plus, the ends of the popular colours are chewed more.

But it’s not hard to string words together – everyone can do it in some form or another. Even the basics, like learning to ask for a bagel or asking someone where the toilets are in a pub are a form of wordsmithing – the only difference being that some of us possess the manual dexterity to type the words as fast as we can think them, and thus the published sentences appear a tad more coherent.

I dislike most writers. But, like all writers, I like my own work. I like to think that I write more for myself than for others – and for that reason, I can generally be assured that if I feel like making myself laugh, I can simply re-read some of the moronic things I’ve written over the years.

It’s the beauty of being a simpleton – repetitive things can often be amusing.

Wrapping Up

And so, you now know how I feel about art. I know that some of you will be shocked, and others outraged – but I can assure you that I have, by no means, set out to offend. Except filmmakers – you can all go to hell.

But everyone else should not be upset by what I’ve written – if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, a spite born of envy must surely run a close second.

This article was first published at http://www.rumanmonkey.com

Previously Blank Page (A4)

By Gregor Stronach

This page used to be blank. It’s not hard to believe – all pages are blank at some stage of their existence. Some pages are doomed to stay blank forever, but it’s not my place to judge them for their decisions. If they wish to remain blank, who am I to impose writing upon them?

But this page isn’t blank. Not anymore. This page is slowly being filled with words, like the ears of a lover are oft poured full of whispered niceties, insistent urgings and warm feelings… as the words appear, they are gifts, like the touch of a lover’s fingers on bare skin on a warm summers night, as a breeze flows through the open window and the room is filled with the scent of fresh limes and sound of soft murmurs… The communication of the writer and the page – two lovers, whispering in the dark.

The words, of course, are dowries, promises of commitment – replete with wrapping and bows, they remain. What’s said cannot be unsaid. What’s written must remain written. Not even god could come up with ‘ctrl-z’ – nor should a writer ever dream or dare to delete. The words should just come from whence they are bidden… flow from the mind to the fingers, to arrive and dress the page for polite company, resplendent in Sunday’s finest.

I’ll take a sip of my beer – the last of the fresh lime is gone, bobbing quietly within the bottle, as the dawn of summer’s insatiable heat arrives through my open windows. This page used to be blank, you know… but it’s becoming less and less so.

It’s a task, you see – a calling. A talent is a gift from the universe – it must be used. We should never become slaves to our abilities, but nor should we ever turn our backs upon them. Like drugs, danger and angry drunks, our ever-present aptitudes should be embraced and faced head on.

My task is simple. To change the world I live in, one word at a time. And that’s why this page used to blank, but now it’s not. I choose to write. I choose to place my hands upon the keyboard and massage my message upon the page, kneading phraseology and tempting my vocabulary – plumb it’s depths to see what fantastic creatures emerge from its inky depths.

The words should lilt – the prose become poetry, the pentameter spastic rather than iambic, but the message remains the same. Like an earnest stage actor in costume, the paper now wears the idea – grateful for the chance to be a part of the change that lies within the turbulent air. One word at a time… and the happiness of creation becomes infectious. Viral – each sentence a contagion of joy.

To create such works fills me with a tangible, visceral sense of excitement – a falling joy. Vertiginous, my mind full of the butterflies that normally reside in my stomach. To write without thinking – to walk a tightrope with no net. To put words upon the page.

These words are mine to share with you – and yours to share with me. This moment, you may not remember in two days, but I will. I’ve given you the best gift that I can. I’ve crafted something from nothing – the laws that govern our universe say that this is impossible, but I beg to differ.

Gaze upon an empty page. Compare its stark, universal whiteness. Run your fingers across its skin, and let your fingertips revel not in its emptiness, but its potential.

Go. Now. Find a page and make it yours. Write, scribble, draw, paint, fold – create. Share with me the pleasure I get from this simple exercise. And when you’re done, hold your creation in your hands, and imagine the people with whom you can share it. Imagine their joy at receiving your gift of creation. Envisage the smiles, the caresses, the kisses… and think to yourself…

This page used to be blank.

This piece was written in one sitting, stream of consciousness, with no editing, no deleting, no changing it at all.  Whatever I typed stayed on the page, as is.  It was first published at http://www.rumandmonkey.com/articles/304

The Pig’s Arms Welcomes Gregor Stronach

I remember being taught to play when I was a child, by my dear father, and I thank him for providing me with such profound knowledge at such an early age.
But these days, I’m older and wiser. I’ve spent time and effort thinking about chess, and the manner in which it mirrors the outside world – a world where we can move in more than two dimensions, but where the rules of the chess board still, fundamentally, apply.

Let us explore this theory in words. Let me expound upon and thump the tub about the way I see the insufferable sadness of the human condition mirrored, errily accurately, atop the black and white surface of the world of chess.

The World.
The world is, essentially, black and white. Right and wrong. Truth or lie. Do or die. For the pieces that reside in the world of chess experience this stark dichotomy on a daily basis. Their world, such as it is, allows for only restricted movement. They have no real freedoms at all. Worse still, as with the real world, the white pieces have the pick of the action, always allowed to move first, in essence always dictating the moves of the black pieces.

Of course, there are times when the black pieces will move to such a position that the white pieces feel that they have no choice but to react, but we all know that it’s an inherited racism, preconditioned into all white pieces, that force the reaction. It’s fear – the boardgame equivalent of crossing the street when the white pieces see the black pieces approaching them at 2am with burglary and other assorted mayhems on their mind. Or so we think… the reality is that the black pieces are simply on their way to the shop to buy milk, and are happily minding their own business.

The Pieces.
Each of the players in life’s little game has their role, as in real life. From the menial, toilet-bowl washers through to the “do nothing but sit around and look magnificent” top tier of life, all facets of class system are there. As in life, the pieces are more or less defined by what they do. “You’re a doctor? Awesome… settle a bet – is this a boil or a mozzie bite?” – likewise each piece on a chess board is effectively hamstrung, their career chosen at birth and with little chance of respite from the gruelling daily grind…

We shall examine them – one by one – and hopefully gain an insight into each of the little tiny personalities that inhabit the ranks and files of life.

The Pawn.
It’s a damning indictment on the state of the world when you consider this fact: The most populous piece on the board is also the weakest. Like the serfs and peons of eras gone by, the fact that there are 16 of the so-called ‘little people’ on the world at the beginning of any match should supply some glimmer of hope – the most precious gift in the world – to the pawns. But they are not the sum of their parts. Repressed and homogenous, they simply exist to do the dirty work, and to die quietly with as much dignity as they can muster.

The lefty inside me wants to marshall them together, and have a quiet meeting at some out of the way square on the board.

“Listen… guys… seriously. Think this through. There are 16 of you here. 16! You can take anyone on the board on your own, so consider this. What if you all grouped together? Formed a union – a Coalition of the Little… you could rise up, seize the means of destruction and rule the board, making it a charming Utopia in which every piece is of equal value. Yes, even the black ones… It’ll be awesome!”

But we all know, deep in our hearts, that while I paint a picture of supreme clarity and truth, it will never, ever happen. Revolutions of any kind are generally doomed to failure one way or another.

And all it will take is for one pawn to reach the final rank at the opposite end of the board, elevate himself to Queen or King, and we’re back where we started. It’s a crying shame.

The Rook.
Ahhh… the safety and security of bricks and mortar are the lesson to be learned here. How solid and dependable are the rooks? They occupy and guard the outer edges of the world, keeping the other players safe from invading paws of curious kittens and insurgencies of spilt beverages. But how high is the price of such security?

I’ll tell you – it’s a terrible toll. Severely restricted movement, and a mindset programmed to think in unbending lines. Compare this to the United States, where the price of freedom is restrictions beyond their wildest nightmares – a government hellbent on tying down its own people to protect them from themselves, and others.

Thus, the Rooks are the US Government of the chess world. Bulky, cumbersome and programmed to defend and destroy, or die trying.

The Knight.
By immediate comparison comes the Knight, a piece with a wonderfully British outlook atop the chequered arena. It’s movements appear eratic, but are – in fact – carefully thought out in advance, taking into account the dual notions of sense of purpose and unpredictability. They like to give the impression that they might, if pushed, be a rogue state. Their wild nature is characterised by the brumby-like physical representation, which in itself speaks volumes.

But… and there’s always a but… on their own, they are all but useless. Any successful hostile action requires the recipient of violence to be backed, literally, into a corner with all avenues of escape cut off.

And then in rides the cavalry, to take the glory and claim the victory as their own. It’s typical, if you ask me… the horsey set always likes to think of itself as punching well above its social weight. When they’re not prancing about the board of life, you’ll find the Knights playing polo and drinking champagne.

The Bishop.
Imagine a life where you are confined in your thinking to a single shade. Black or white, once you are placed in your initial position, that’s it – you may not ever occupy a square of the other shade. You must only believe in the one thing, forever more, until you are killed or the war is won.

It’s a damning indictment upon life off-board – where religious views are expounded upon at length, but rarely scrutinised and never challenged. As with any belief that is set in stone, it invariably ends in tears – it’s okay to have convictions and a strong set of moral values, but without wriggle room, it’s easy to end up trapped. If you cannot see the other side of an argument, you are doomed to lose.

The other telling point about the Bishops is that they do not move in a straight line – not in the classical sense. They’re sneaky, often arriving unexpectedly from the far side of the world to wreak violence and brutality upon those least expecting it. All of this from a man of the cloth? It’s wrong… but it’s the way of the world.

The Queen.
The Queen is the most honestly representative piece on the board, in terms of power, gender politics and potential capabilities. As a female, the Queen is the sole representative of women. As in the real world, women are horrendously under-represented in the upper echelons of power. This is, of course, coupled with the obvious glass ceiling – the Queen can never become the King, as the King never dies. Add to that the constant threat that one of the pawns may indeed reach the far rank of the board, and suddenly the Queen has another contender for the favours of the King. It’s horrible… and an eerily accurate reflection of the real world.

This is tempered by another fine example of art imitating life. Despite the horrifying inequities faced by the Queen every day, she is quite clearly the most powerful piece in the world – and deservedly so. The iconic image of a strong woman with immense dynamism and efficacy is one that justifiably succeeds, transcending the hardship that women face to become, literally, the monarch of all they survey.

The King.
Bloated, corpulent and lazy, the King is a figurehead – a lumbering dinosaur whose only relevance to the world at large is to simply be. Without him, all is lost – but his presence serves only to provide purpose to the lives of others, who must live and die to protect him.

On many levels, I’m sure the other pieces have grown to hate the King. The King is little more than a chubby dictator – his whims to be observed, his life sacrosanct.

His slothfulness and propensity for avarice have clearly made him far too hefty to move too far too quickly – so that while he enjoys the same privileges of freedom of direction as the Queen, she will leave him far behind should the shit really hit the fan.

And to be frank, were I the Queen, I’d leave him behind too. If he can’t get his act together enough to be able to move fast should the need arise, he deserves to die. Let his lackeys from the church and stable look after him – the Queen will be seeking safe passage to Lichtenstein within the hour.

In conclusion.
It’s obvious to even the most casual observer that chess is indeed a game – one that has its roots in the violence of conquest and its complexities founded in the notion of human interaction. But at the end of the day it is – just like the life and universe it mirrors – just a game. It’s unbalanced and bigoted, often violent and strangely bleak… and that’s the way we seem to like it.

I give this game four and a half stars out of five.