Tag Archives: richard serra

Tuesday 29th June 2010 – No photo tonight, folks.

I haven’t really done anything to warrant one.

This morning with Terry having gone to mow a meadow, I profited by doing a big load of washing (this little tabletop washing machine that I bought in a brocante is proving its worth), watering all of the plants and doing some desultory tidying in the verandah.

This afternoon was in the Sauna or Black Hole of Calcutta otherwise known as Radio Arverne in Gerzat where we melted away while recording our programmes. And not just that – we had to record a trailer in French and I also had to translate part of the website into English. All for free, of course. No chance of turning our new-found popularity (we are being described, apparently, as “our favourite Anglophones”) into any of the Folding Stuff.

In other news, I see that an art exhibition in the Tate Gallery is hitting the headlines. This exhibition concerns a couple of means of transport being stripped of useful parts and lain on their sides for people to walk around and stare at. Now those of you that have been to visit me around here and other places in which I have lived will know that in my garden and my field I have several other means of transport stripped of useful parts and lying on their sides for people to walk around. And they have been called many different things by many different people, but “works of art” was never one of them.

And as my unmade bed on a bad day can match the best that Tracy Eminem can turn out, I’m getting rather fed up of my clearly well-developed artistic talents going unnoticed or being subjected to ridicule.

But seriously, I remember Whistler suing the art critic John Ruskin for saying that one of Whistler’s latest works was “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. But if you look at these aeroplanes on their sides, or look at Tracy Eminen’s unmade bed, or look at anything that Richard Serra has ever churned out, then who is kidding whom? If anyone living in the Combrailles feels the urge to visit a gallery of Modern Art then they are quite welcome to come for a visit here.

And if they do, then perhaps they can explain to me the difference between what is on display and described as Modern Art in some of these high-ranking tourist traps, and all of the rubbish and junk that I have lying around here?

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Thursday 28th January 2010 – Last night when I went to bed …

…there was a brilliantly clear sky with thousands of stars. And cold! – it reached almost minus 9 outside.

And so what was the weather like this morning? I had no idea as all of the windows were covered over with a layer of snow and you couldn’t see the sky through the heavy thick grey murky cloud that had stuck on the mountain.

And that was where it stayed all day. Alternating snow and low cloud and nothing in the way of solar energy. I shinned up on the roof a couple of times to clean off the snow from the solar panels but I was wasting my time.

It was freezing cold too – I’ve never known it so uncomfortable – so I decided that today would be an “office” day catching up on the paperwork and paying bills. And surprise surprise, even my solicitors in the UK who manage the letting of my house decided to join in the fun. So having written piles of letters went to print them – and the printer refused to work. Last time I had an office day I put a new cartridge in the printer because the old one had stopped working. But when I went to print everything out, the new cartridge refused to work and nothing I could do would get it to print. So I took the cartridge out and put the old one back in – and that worked perfectly. So what’s going on here?

Then it was down to the Post Office through the snow and ice (I’m so pleased I bought those tyres) and back up here where I crashed out again for a while.

I’ve been thinking about seeds to plant in my new vegetable plot for this year. As you know, I’m moving it to a new site as I’ll be putting hardcore down over the present plot and parking Caliburn on it once the commune agree to sell it to me. In any case the current one is suffering from a considerable lack of attention due to the work on the house that I did during the growing season. You can’t see anything at all due to weeds and so I can safely say that I have lost the plot completely. I’ve no idea what seeds I need to buy though. I’m hoping to have a chat with Liz and anyone else who might be interested in a combined order so that we can spread the costs and the postage out between us. It sounds like a right seedy deal to me.

In other news a British artist has summoned up a skip (or a dumpster for our Septic readers) into which he plans to heave some of the efforts of his colleagues and rivals. He’s inviting suggestions from his readers as to whose works of art can be heaved in there. Of course, that artist-cum-rapper Tracey Eminem has come to the forefront. But as long-term readers of these pages will recall, a “sculptor” named Richard Serra gets my vote every time. Modern “art” is not my thing at all and it isn’t the thing of all that many people either. My opinion of modern art is that the only way you can tell if a work is finished is to touch it and see if it is dry. If it’s hanging up on a wall it’s a painting and if you can walk around it then it’s a sculpture, and that’s about that. But I ought to stop being so negative about it all. If Tracey Eminem can sell her unmade bed for thousands then the contents of my barn and garage ought to set me up for the rest of my life.

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