Posts Tagged ‘music’
Six Fugues by John Bunker
On my trip to London on what must be the hottest day of the year so far, even though it’s now about 7 o’clock in the evening it’s still really warm and here I am wearing a suit, carrying luggage and chasing across the capital to visit Westminster Library, to see collages by John Bunker in the show Six Fugues, curated by Sam Cornish.
Installation view, my snapshot
The moment I set eyes on them I know the effort was more than worth it. I have seen one of these in reproduction and liked it, but seeing them here for real is so much better. Why is it that not being able to hold them in my hand and perceiving the depth of the supports and the proper sizes makes a difference? Also, that they have weight, they are on MDF rather than paper, (no glass – excellent), adds to the sense of their physical presence. That, as well as the stuff they’re made from, “torn posters, shattered CDs, abandoned chicken-shop boxes,” combined with the painterliness of the gestural flourishes, even in collage there are plenty of those, all adds to their materiality. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think of them as paintings, the construction method of which is collage, rather than collages made with painted elements.
John Bunker, Shady Hill Fugue, 2014, mixed media collage on MDF. Image by courtesy of the artist
In the exhibition notes Sam Cornish reminds me that collage is a century old, and the many library books open at appropriate pages assembled on a table and in a display case connect Bunkers work clearly to this tradition, a reproduction of Kurt Schwitters’ The Hitler Gang from 1944, having immediate resonance, for me, with Bunker’s Falling Fugue with it’s strong triangular figure and concentric circle motif. As in other works here, the figures(torn and cut shapes and gestural painterly marks), seem to occupy a fairly narrow cubist space, blues often being interpreted (by me at any rate) as sky, which sometimes opens up into a much deeper space than I was first perceiving, especially in Shady Hill Fugue where the blue plane on the right hand edge becomes as sky seen beneath, but also beyond, an archway suggested by an arc in sandstone ochre, possibly the MDF support. A triangle of a similar colour inserts itself at the bottom right hand corner which is different enough tonally to bring it forward of the darker and more saturated central ochre colour, allowing the other shapes to dance within the space created. I say dance because they seem ungrounded, there’s no sense of an earth or floor other than the bottom edge of the support.
John Bunker, Falling Fugue, 2014, mixed media collage on MDF, 54 x 52.5cm, Image by courtesy of the artist
In Falling Fugue the obstructed blue circle along the left edge doesn’t quite become open space, unless I focus on the bottom half of the work and then the blue area does seem to recede further than when I have the whole image in view. My eye seems to be taken downwards, I guess it must be because of the strong direction lines, pointing towards the lower edge. I do indeed get a sensation of things falling. Also, I feel that I may be looking slightly upwards, as if I am nearer to the bottom of the frame, whereas in Night Fugue it’s the other way around, enhanced in the photo by the downward angle of the shot, but still taking place when looking directly at the picture. Here the light blues and greys also sometimes become infinite space against which the flatter coloured areas jut forward or within which ink splatters become forms. Then the arrangement shifts so that the large flat area of red becomes a plane in front of which ochre, green, orange blue and grey cut outs jostle or float. The pink triangle at the bottom edge positions itself in front of the ochre but behind the grey/blue pentagon, in front of which a pale yellow triangle hovers, itself obstructed by a dark blue shape that is echoed higher up.
John Bunker, Night Fugue, 2014, mixed media collage on MDF, 30 x 33cm. Image by courtesy of the artist
And then, of course, they are simply torn papers (etc) randomly assembled on a flat surface. I get to wondering about how much randomness there is in Bunker’s process, I imagine him scattering this week’s finds across the floor and then frenetically rearranging them. What do I know? His method may be quite the opposite of that.
Looking in other library book reproductions, I see similarities also in Cubist works from 1913 or 14, especially perhaps Juan Gris still-lives, with extensive use of collage and creating similar pictorial spaces as these I see in this show. What seems different though is the continued link in the still-lives to representational content. However much a Picasso, Braque or Gris still life is ‘abstracted from’ reality it still maintains that connection, I can recognise a guitar here, a rum bottle or a fragment of newspaper there. In Bunker’s work such elements are almost completely absent, and where for example, a fragment of newsprint or a star motif might be recognised they seem accidental.
Installation view, my snapshot
The overriding similarities however, might be in the method of composition, according to rules, that are indeed abstract, in the same way perhaps that the strict laws of counterpoint and fugue in music are abstract.
Speaking of musicality in regard to Cubism, most of the following words by Paul Erich Küppers, director of the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover, writing in 1920, could apply to Bunkers collages:
“…from pale harmonies of colour lines ascend, prisms shoot up, advance towards us or jump backwards, cutting steps out of the infinite space…They multiply, cluster into chords animated by the rhythm, executing their dance against the backdrop of that absolute music which is space. One experiences this transcendental dynamism no differently from the counterpoint of Bach’s fugues, so far removed from reality”∗.
And I say “most of the following words” only because “pale harmonies of colour” understates the power of the colours in Bunkers fugues, and also I don’t really find “prisms”, his shapes are flatter that that, as indeed they often were also in the collage still-lives of Gris.
John Bunker, Blue Fugue, 2014, mixed media collage on MDF, 49.5 x 38cm. Image by courtesy of the artist
If that modernist innovation collage is 100 years old, so also is the tradition of speaking of visual abstract works in terms of the musical structure of the fugue. Whilst allusions to fugue are only occasionally found in nineteenth century writings about art, they abound in the early twentieth century, the dawn of abstraction. Kandinsky entitled a 1912 painting Fugue (Controlled Improvisation), and by the 1920s lots of artists were doing it, Paul Klee and Josef Albers, amongst them.
John Bunker, Shattered Fugue, 2014, mixed media collage on MDF, 44 x 51cm. Image by courtesy of the artist
In a fugue, one instrument or voice follows another echoing note for note the initial tune, as in a ’round’, the voice that enters last reiterates the opening melody (the fugue subject) whilst the preceding voice carries on with its own independent tune (the counter subject), with three or more parts the same process is repeated several times, amazingly the voices fitting together and making sense in ‘counterpoint’. There are usually three sections: an exposition, a development and a recapitulation. Melodies might be repeated backwards or upside down or played again with doubled or halved note values, and counterpoint intervals may be varied.
Such a structure can easily be translated to the visual modality, a figure being inverted, rotated, mirrored, drawn back to front, etc and it all exists simultaneously in the same space. Hence its attraction perhaps for visual artists, and specifically for abstract artists because the structure is entirely formal, no rushing water, no bird song, no bell ringing, no Wagnerian images.
John Bunker, John Islip Fugue, 2014, Mixed media collage on MDF, 61 x 37.5cm. Image by courtesy of the artist
So, for example, in John Islip Fugue, we get arcs and circles each echoing another, in similar and contrasting hues, impossible now to tell which one was placed first, and rectangles that may have been rotated and layered one over another. What I am not sure about is just how systematic Bunker’s method is, the extent to which the fugue is a strict compositional device or whether it’s a fairly loose metaphor. I suspect it is the latter.
Another attraction of the fugue for abstract artists is that it offers a structural method that offers an alternative to more arbitrary approaches and it appeals more to the intellect than it does to the emotions (though we shouldn’t overlook the emotional impact) . The Constructivist tradition comes to mind for me now, with its own take on collage, structure and fugue-like systems of rotation, repetition, inversion, etc. but I will leave those reflections for another day. Enough now to say that Bunker’s six fugues are a delight!
Six Fugues: New Collages by John Bunker was showing at Westminster Library between 1 July and 19 July 2014.
∗Paul Erich Küppers quote taken from The Music of Painting by Peter Vergo
Room to Roam
Room to Roam
You go yours
and I’ll go mine
the many ways we wend
Many days
and many ways
ending in one end
Many a wrong and its curing song
many a road and many an inn
Room to roam but only one home
for all the world to win
So you go yours
and I’ll go mine
and the many many ways we’ll wend
Many days and many ways
ending in one end
Room to roam but only one home
for all the world to win
So you go yours
and I’ll go mine
and the many many ways we’ll wend
Many days and many ways
ending in one end
Room to roam but only one home
ending in one end
George MacDonald (1824 – 1905)
Set to music by Mike Scott in 1990
Art and Jazz: Tomorrow at the Old Lockup Studio, Cromford
Tomorrow sees our one night only exhibition Salon1 at the Old Lockup Studio in Cromford, contemporary art by regional artists (including yours truly) with contemporary jazz by Corey Mwabma.
The connection between modern art and jazz goes back some way. For a start there is Piet Mondrian’s love of Jazz and dance band, evidenced in titles of paintings like Foxtrot A and Foxtrot B, Broadway Boogie-Woogie and Victory Boogie-Woogie, as well as in his writings. He liked Boogie-Woogie, of which he said:
I conceive (it) as homogenous in intention with mine in painting: destruction of melody, which is the equivalent of the destruction of natural appearance, and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means – dynamic rhythm.
There won’t be any Mondrians on show at Salon1
Then there’s Henri Mattise’s artist’s book of 1947 Jazz which he considered to be a “chromatic and rhythmic improvisation” the structure of rhythm and repetition broken by the unexpected action of improvisations.
And there are countless others, including American artist Stuart Davis, who desribed jazz as “a continuous source of inspiration in my work” an American art form in which he discovered “the same quality of art that I found in the best European painting”.
Pop up at the old lock up
The artists exhibiting at the pop-up exhibition Salon 1, the Summer Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Old Lock Up Studio in Cromford on the 18th August 2012 are: Diane Atherton, Jackie Berridge, Clay Smith, Nick Hersey, Ivan Smith, Anthony Hall, Rachael Pinks, Jen Aitken, Filomena Rodriguez, Amanda Collis, Kim Sharratt, Vitor Azevedo, Nicola Eleanor Waite, Gareth Buxton, David Manley, Andy Parkinson, Justine Nettleton, Deb Allit and Dermot Punnett.
Having a quick look at the web sites has got me in the mood for seeing interesting work of many different types, whether abstract paintings by David Manley, narrative paintings by Jackie Berridge, photomontage of Clay Smith (by the way, am I the only one making a distinction these days between montage and collage, and have I even got it right?) abstract landscape collage paintings by Rachael Pinks, sculpture (?) by Ivan Smith etc.
What I am noticing most is that much of the work is classifiable with a / sign, whether it is sculpture/environmental art, painting/collage, abstract/figurative. I like the “neither this nor that/both this and that” of many of the kinds of work being exhibited. Even my own work which mostly stays put in one specific discipline is increasingly becoming painting/construction.
I think it promises to be a really interesting exhibition, and with music by Corey Mwamba an excellent evening. Come and see it if you can!
Salon 1 at the Old Lock Up Studio, Cromford
Another event I am looking forward to (not least because I am taking part) is Salon 1, the Summer Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Old Lock Up Studio in Cromford on the 18th August 2012, for one night only!
Corey Mwamba will be providing the music, a real treat. Catch him on you tube here
What better for a summer’s evening? Come along if you are anywhere near.
Corey Mwamba!
Thank you Clay Smith for introducing me to the music of Corey Mwamba
Isn’t it marvelous?!
Unfortunately I will miss his solo set at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham, on 14 July so I am listening to and downloading music from his website at www.coreymwamba.co.uk for now.
Sing Sing Sing!
I wonder of the painting by Jack Bush with the same title (see http://www.supremefiction.com/theidea/2012/04/the-lightness-of-jack-bush.html) was a reference to this tune. Popular models in abstract painting?
“Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” is a 1936 song, written by Louis Prima and first recorded by him with the New Orleans Gang and released in March 1936 as a 78 as Brunswick 7628 (with “It’s Been So Long” as the B side). It is strongly identified with the big band and swing eras. It was covered by Fletcher Henderson and most famously Benny Goodman.
The Benny Goodman’s version
When I learned Quickstep, I danced it with the rhythm of this song
The Music of Painting
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.
patternsthatconnect 
