Book of the week #4
I have a friend who believes that his artistic practice lives in a bubble, and that he ought not to engage with others within his field. What is one man’s idea, swiftly becomes another’s trend and a third’s copying.
It’s a fairly cynical way of looking at the world of ‘creating’ things, but there is an element of truth, and calls to mind the question of the role of research, is it designed to further our own ideas? Or what about the importance of inspiration which sends the artist off on a different path?
Have all the songs been sung? Buildings built? Films made? And photos taken?
Of course not.
Another friend believes vehemently, to the point of obsession, of the importance of pain and hardship for an artist to create good work. Comfort if the enemy, stability the devil and affluence an enigma.
I get it, I really do, but feather pillows, warm rooms, good food and daily bathing are my jam.
What do I think? Well, if you wish to create, in whatever format, work which is of personal consequence, work which leaves you perhaps not satisfied - is anyone who creates ever satisfied – but needing to create more. To showcase your point of view, you have to push yourself, take risks, be more than a touch selfish (although get over yourself) and also occasionally commune with the best. To stand with wonder looking and asking questions about how and why.
Not because you wish to copy, and even if you did you couldn’t, because there are those who operate at a level with that ineffable something.
Instead, because to engage with others and their work is to think about the collective and the singular, to play a part in society and allow the world around you to help further natural ability.
From my home out here in the sticks, well the Wiltshire/Somerset border, I am confronted daily by some of the most extraordinary countryside, parcels of land that through human intervention and natural power, amaze, frustrate and calm.
It is countryside you want to be out in, in all weathers, because each time it feels like a conversation with what and who has been before.
The ultimate chronicler of this landscape via lens, is also perhaps the ultimate chronicler of the human condition: Don McCullin. His updated autobiography: Unreasonable Behaviour, this week’s book of the week, is less a book about taking photos, but one about the absurdities and cruelty of life, and the lengths that we as humans will go to obtain power.
His photos of war zones and inner city poverty are tattooed on our nation’s eyeballs, defining images of the mid to late 20th Century, photos taken in pursuit of the truth and at the expense of personal safety.
Alongside this, photos taken across the UK but primarily near his home in Batcombe, Somerset, three and a half miles on foot from Hauser and Wirth Bruton where a retrospective of his landscapes opened last week.
Landscapes which are as far removed from overblown, photoshopped, phony lit, Ikea canvas lite countryside as is possible. Instead, fractions of time caught as if spells in a bottle and presented like straight machine gun fire across the gallery walls. An exhibition to travel and see, to stop and think, question how and why.
The book is the same, tight prose, bestseller tight, words which match their photographic companions, moments of time hauntingly caught, stories told shortly and sharply for maximum and unforgettable impact.