patternsthatconnect

It was Mattisse who said

It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.

Would it have been less bourgeois if he had said “worker” instead of “businessman”?

There is an impression that results from a particular juxtaposition of colours, lights and shades: what one might call the music of painting

Eugene Delacroix

… is quoted in the frontispiece of  Peter Vergo’s book The Music of Painting, first published in 2010 and just out in paperback.

according to Charles Darwent, Art Quarterly, it’s “a must-have for anyone interested in why modernism looks (and sounds) as it does”

good job I have it then! It was a birthday present, and I have just started reading it.

The front cover shows a reproduction of Theo van Doesburg’s Rhythm of a Russian Dance,1918. Music and dance have an obvious connection with each other and a less obvious one with painting. I have blogged about it before in relation to Mondrian, whose work also features in the book, in a chapter entitled Art, Jazz and Silence. I am also reminded of another book  Music and Modern Art, edited by James Leggio, and containing a chapter by Harry Cooper called Popular Models: Fox-Trot and Jazz Band in Mondrian’s Abstraction.

In a recent Rough Cuts video, James Kalm reviews the Stanley Whitney exhibition Left to Right, at Team Gallery (some great pics here ) saying of Whitney  “His approach to color and rhythm are akin to the spontaneous riffs of great jazz solos”.

In Blogland, Scott Van Holzen’s blog  art in music is dedicated to paintings based on musical themes and Ruth Gray, tells of how listening to some old records, she feels inspired to paint the colours she hears. I guess that making a connection between visual, auditory and kinaesthetic arts is almost bound to get somewhat synaesthetic.

Piet Mondrian suggested that humanity seeks rest within motion, or “repose through movement”[1] and he found an example of it in dance, referring possibly to the foxtrot, he said “each movement is immediately neutralized by a countermovement which signifies the search for equilibrium”[2].

Taking part in the ISTD dance medallist competition (ballroom, latin and sequence) at Castleford Civic Centre on 11 March, I thought that my own foxtrot seemed to have too much repose and not enough movement! Maybe I was feeling too relaxed after looking at the Henry Moore reclining figure on the way into the centre.

The reclining figure figures a lot in Henry Moore’s oeuvre, and he donated this one in 1980 to Castleford, the town where he was born, the Civic Centre having been officially opened a decade earlier on 24 March 1970.

The Civic Centre, a fine example of modernist architecture, designed by Derek Goad, is an optimistic looking building if ever I saw one, even now when it seems to reflect an optimism about the future that is a situated in the modernist period, when perhaps we believed more honestly in “a steady advance from the poor environment of the past to the more pleasant and brighter surroundings of the future”[3]. One of the features of the building is its facing in precast concrete panels manufactured from a limestone aggregate chosen for its weathering properties: “it has been found to get naturally lighter in colour with exposure to the atmosphere so counteracting the darkening process caused by the atmosphere itself”[4]. Apart from the darkening beneath the windows this hope, this countermovement does seem to have been realised.

I find it a hopeful place also by association, because of the activity (medallist competition dancing) for which I have been here a few times now. I go in filled with hope anyway! Sometimes I come out feeling even better than when I went in, other times less so. I first started to become interested in the building when I looked across the dancefloor/theatre and saw the wall sculpture, comissioned for the opening in 1970, silent, static, yet visually rhythmic (movement through repose perhaps). The dynamic rhythms of the dancefloor seem to be echoed in the sculptural forms.

The artist is Diana Dean, who was working with abstract geometric form in both painting and sculpture at the time, and the work, made in stainless steel, is entitled Symmetry in Opposition. I could wonder to what extent the title also echoes that idea of equilibrium found in the Mondrian quote above. Dean explained to me that at first the two projected squares were facing inwards with two corners touching, and then this changed to the outward projection which is why she called it Symmetry in Opposition.

Here are some photo’s of what it looked like in 1970.

I wonder if I also find Mondrian’s notion of the neutralisation of opposites in the contrast between the stasis of the final form Vs the activity of its making.

Dean moved to Canada in 1975, where she focused on painting and moved away from abstraction, the geometry hidden, as it were, within the structure, supporting the figuration. When I contacted her recently she replied saying “I felt it was quite synchronistic to receive your email this week as I had just begun a portrait painting with geometric patterning appearing in the carpet and all perspective lines in the room going to the left eye of the sitter. Maybe I am moving towards a new form of geometric abstraction again”[5].

A psychological reading might suggest that we are witnessing a “return of the repressed”.

(Thanks to Diana Dean and Derek Goad for supplying information and pictures for this blog post)

Mondrian, a keen social dancer, disliked the Waltz. It was romantic, emotional, and the rise and fall and sway seemed to denote the curved line. He preferred the Foxtrot and the rhythms and figures that would later become the Quickstep, modern, all straight lines, abrupt changes of direction, obtuse angles and speed. I could imagine that some social dancers like Mondrian might have expected the new dances to replace the Waltz for ever. However, rather than one replacing another they all carried on being danced, side by side, as it were. Today, no longer new, the Modern Waltz, Modern Foxtrot etc continue to be danced.

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) Composition C (no.III), with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 Oil on canvas, 56.2 x 55.1 cm Private collection, on loan to Tate © 2012 Mondrian/ Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Washington DC

At the time (not long before Mondrian was in London painting, and dancing, with the Nicholson/Hepworth crowd),  I wonder if it could have seemed like abstraction might replace figurative painting. Now in the modern ‘modern world’ (metamodern possibly), both remain whilst newer art forms than painting are dominant. Like ballroom dancing, painting continues alongside more contemporary practices, and within the (in)discipline of painting representation and abstraction co-exist.

At the Indiscipline of Painting  exhibition at the Mead Gallery some of the abstract paintings on show question the relationship between abstraction and representation. The show as a whole explores the endurance of abstraction (arguably Mondrian’s invention), specifically concentrating on international abstract painting since the sixties. There is an international element to another abstract painting exhibition that opens in February: Mondrian//Nicholson in Parallel at the Courtauld Gallery where the relationship between the these two artists and their work is the theme. For a few weeks the Courtauld exhibition and the Mead Gallery exhibition will be showing in parallel, a short train journey apart.

Seeing them in parallel may give us a detailed view of abstraction since its early days, what has happened and what is now happening to it, especially now that we no longer think of the adventure in terms of linear progression.

At the Indiscipline show, Bernard Frize’s wonderful painting for example, has little continuity with Mondrian, other than its abstractness, neither in the way it looks nor in its attitude.

Bernard Frize, Suite Segond 100 no 3, 1980, Alkyd Urethane lacquer on canvas162 x 130 cmCollection of the artist, courtesy Simon Lee Gallery, London

Has Mondrian’s utopian purity been replaced by its opposite? Instead of painstaking corrections in the search for harmony we have a chance placing of colours skimmed from the top of the paint cans. Mondrian’s dislike of the curve was not shared by other early abstractionists, for Nicholson the circle starts to look like an image of purity, but not here. For Frize it even has a referent, the paint can. Also, long gone is the insistence on red yellow and blue with black and white, and whereas Mondrian and Nicholson thought of their art as ‘spiritual’ and somewhat lofty, Frize’s seems entirely ‘material’ and approaching the trivial. It is matter of fact, mechanical perhaps, yet not quite resigned or cynical. I still have the sense of searching, discovery and playfulness (or possibly gamefulness) that seems to me to be part of what makes abstraction continually new, interesting and endurable. In ballroom dancing, though the steps and figures of each dance were invented long ago, their repetition in each new performance continues to demonstrate the impossibility of repetition. Though I have heard it said that the ‘language’ of abstraction has now been invented, it is still very much alive.

Mondrian//Nicholson in Parallel is showing from 16 February 2012 to 20 May 2012, and The Indiscipline of Painting is at the Mead Gallery until 10 March 2012.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian is a clear reference to music and dance. Mondrian was a keen ballroom dancer, and some of his works are named after dances, for example Fox-Trot B, and Fox-Trot-Lozenge-Composition-with-Three-Black-Lines.

I read in one place at least the implication that he was a good dancer, for example that he practised dance steps in his studio and was known as ‘The Dancing Madonna’ in Holland. Then in another place:

He went shopping for painter’s smocks with Naum Gabo’s wife Miriam and danced with Peggy Guggenheim and Virginia Pevsner in the London jazz clubs. His love of jazz and dancing was well known, but Miriam recalled that he “was a terrible dancer… Virginia hated it and I hated it, we had to take turns dancing with him”.

In an article entitled Dancing with Mondrian By Annette Chauncy, published by The International Journal of the Arts in Society, she suggests that the paintings were possibly inspired by the dances, especially the Foxtrot, the Quickstep and the Tango.

I also found this little film clip entitled Mondrian and Dance at the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art, suggesting that the paintings ‘dance’ more than perhaps we thought.

I noticed that someone found my blog site by searching on “old-time dances like the Veleta etc”. I have posted before about old-time (or classical) sequence dancing because it has become a ‘private passion’ and it is difficult not to find patterns that connect one area of interest to another. I have connected sequence dancing to my abstract paintings, for example entitling one series of sketches “the Square Tango” because of the square format, the “16 bar” repeat pattern and the staccato rhythm.

Another connection I have made, that is no doubt entirely spurious and frivolous, but I just cannot help making it, is between the dance categories of classical, modern and latin and the art categories of traditional, modern and post-modern.  I am sure that they do not actually correspond.

Anyway, if you were searching for old-time dances like the Veleta (what a dance, by the way) because you wanted to learn how to do them, I can think of no better aid than The Classical Sequence Companion, by the ISTD Sequence Faculty, an excellent DVD that I have constantly in my DVD player. It is a brilliant guide through the world of classical sequence dancing and a step by step analysis of 17 ISTD syllabus dances including The Veleta, wonderfully danced by my own teachers Robert and Louise Aldred.

It also includes Classical Waltz, Boston Two Step, Fylde Waltz, Midnight Tango, Lilac Waltz, Saunter Revé, Gainsborough Glide, Premier Two Step, Royal Empress Tango, Empress Mazurka, Wedgewood Blue Gavotte, Kensington Two Step, La Mascotte, Tango Magenta, Britannia Saunter and Rialto Two Step.

At the Blackpool Sequence Dance Festival 2011, in the Empress Ballroom of the Winter Gardens, attempting to learn brand new sequence dances, with a large group of people, I found it very difficult. It was wonderful and I loved it, especially as others took pity on us and helped us out, yet I really struggled to pick up 16 bars of steps in half an hour.

I could see many people, 20 years my senior and more, finding it quite easy to do what seemed an almost impossible task to me. What was it that made us different?

Maybe we could put it down to learning styles: this is not my favoured way of learning, I would rather read instructions first or have them explained to me in an environment where I could ask lots of questions, and then slowly piece the whole together part by part. I also seemed to suffer from ‘performance pressure’ that may have been absent in a smaller group or on my own.

It was possibly David Kolb that introduced the notion of learning styles, along the lines of: learning has a cycle of four stages and though all stages are required we may have a preference for a certain stage more than others. I have the impression that Honey and Mumford‘s learning styles are more or less the same as Kolb’s, but with more accessible labels, so we have Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist styles. One implication of the theory is that we learn best when our own style is adequately catered for, Activists and Pragmatists preferring to learn by doing, Reflectors and Theorists favouring a more thinking approach etc. Learning professionals closer to NLP might use the distinctions Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic as learning styles.

But isn’t this somewhat limiting? “I don’t learn that way” “It’s not my learning style” could easily become an excuse to prevent further learning. Isn’t it rather that what is needed is learning at a higher level?

Gregory Bateson proposed that there are levels of learning, where Learning 0 is an habitual automatic response to a given stimulus, Learning 1 is a trial and error process of adaptation to the given environment, Learning 2 is a process of corrective change in the set of alternatives from which choices are made at level 1, and Learning 3 (which rarely, if ever occurs) is about our whole process of forming, exchanging and losing level 2 habits.

Learning how to learn in the situation I described above would be Learning 2, which would then mean that on future occasions I could participate more successfully in the trial and error process of learning the new dances in the large group in only half an hour. One way to do this would be to model the strategies of other dancers/learners, which would I suggest also be a more sophisticated use of NLP.

A few months ago I posted a slideshow entitled Square Tango and I said it had little to do with the old-time sequence dance from where I took the name.

I recently noticed that I have had a few search engine referrals for ‘”how to do the square tango” and I started to empathise with the people visiting my site and being disappointed to find a slideshow that is hardly related to the subject of their search at all.

So I looked for “how to do the square tango” myself and found that there are a few sites that give the steps and a few posts on YouTube. However, on viewing them you would be little the wiser on how to do it. You might know a little more about what to do, assuming (wrongly perhaps) that the demonstrations are anything like correct.

If the content is the steps of the dance, and the process is how to execute those steps, then content is a little easier to establish than process. There is a script, with some comments on process, in the book Learning the Essential Sequence Dances by T A Whitworth. But surely the best way to learn how to is to get some lessons, and that must be especially the case for the searcher looking for “how to do the turn in the Square Tango”.

Doesn’t the content/process distinction correspond to the declarative/procedural knowledge distinction? Declarative knowledge is knowing that whilst procedural knowledge is knowing how to. The internet, e-learning, reading, etc, help a lot when declarative knowledge is what we seek, but add very little when our goal is procedural knowledge. For that we need a combination of lessons and practical experience.

Is it that I am attracted to marginal activities? I usually blog about abstract painting, a marginal activity if ever there was one. What was that article I was reading recently where the author was concerned that contemporary art might go the same way as Jazz: it will always have an audience but it is no longer a motive force for change? But then, how influential are  ‘mainstream’ activities anyway?

Going to Derby train station late on Saturday afternoon we got stuck in the traffic leaving Pride Park football stadium (for American readers that’s soccer – a very mainstream activity here in the UK). There we were, inching our way from one traffic island to another, and for a few moments I could more easily believe that we would be stuck there forever than that the system had within it the seeds of its own transformation. Needless to say, we missed the train. But for all those supporters having been taken to (or having taken themselves to) the ball game, for them half an hour stuck in traffic may have seemed a small price to pay, especially when you win 3 nil.

Later that evening, being taken to the ballroom, a marginal activity if ever there was one, less than £15 for the two of us was a very small price to pay for 3 hours of unalloyed pleasure. As we entered the Regency Ballroom in Sutton in Ashfield, the Terry Peters Big Band were playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”.

The band play here on a regular basis, about once a month on a Saturday night. As usual, they played three 45 minute sets: big band jazz and dance band music, great just to listen to, and even better to dance to. In fact, I can think of nothing more enjoyable than dancing to a 16 piece big band!

They played tunes such as “Just the Thought of You”, “Fascination”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, “Take the ‘A’ Train”, “All That Jazz”, “It Can’t Be Love” and “My Favourite Things”, many of them featuring singer Suzanne, my own favourite being her “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” to jive to and the Jive that immediately followed it: “Clementine” sung by the Band Leader Dennis Halfpenny (complete with dodgy lyrics).

There were modern ballroom Waltzes, Quicksteps and Foxtrots as well as Latin: Cha Cha Cha and Rumba. And where can you go these days to hear the Veleta played live, and dance to it (social version as showed on the link), along with other old-time favourites like St Bernard’s Waltz, Square Tango and the Barn Dance? And where else do you get all ages (more older than younger I admit) enjoying themselves together? And though there is a good licensed bar there’s too much fun to be had dancing than to be getting drunk (a very mainstream activity). I don’t understand why there aren’t queues all the way round the block just to get in!

Michelle and Nathan from M&N Photography were there taking a few photos and they kindly supplied these images and gave me permission to post them here. Their event website is www.michellehowardphotography.com and here’s a link to their facebook page.