Charlotte Sometimes

Category: Art

Paris: Day 2

Bastile

So, the photo tour of Paris continues.

It turned out to be a glorious day today which was a lovely contrast to the very grey day that we arrived on yesterday. It was even warm in the sun, although bitterly cold during the day.

I set out at 0900hrs for a leisurely wander to my first lecture of the day at the Pantheon.

Boulevard Henri IV

I really love the classical design elements on some of the Parisian townhouses. And the ironwork balconies too, of course.

Boulevard Henri IV

Boulevard Henri IV – a garage with petrol pumps on one of the main roads through Paris. Just pull over, mid flow of traffic, and fill up!

Pont de la Tournelle and Notre-Dame.

Pont de la Tournelle – statue of Saint Geneviève (the Paton Saint of Paris).

Notre-Dame again, showing the wall built to create the more solid island.

Townhouse windows – Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Window gardens – Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Amazing part of the old Monastry that was knocked down to make way for the Pantheon.

The back of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, showing the flying buttresses.

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont – front elevation. Weird mix of classical and gothic architecture.

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont – even more weird combos of classical and gothic architecture. The turrets in particular are interesting – their use was restricted in Paris so they were a status symbol for those allowed to use them on their buildings.

We couldn’t get inside the church because it was Easter Sunday, but I wanted to show you guys what it looks like inside. The decoration is utterly spectacular.

The Pantheon with it’s dome covered in scaffolding while it undergoes restoration.

Rue Valette, looking towards the Seine.

The pediment of the Pantheon. A secular frieze celebrating the great men of the nation.

Front elevation of the neo-classical Pantheon, behind is the more recent 19thC classical university library.

Under the portico of the Pantheon. Notice the heavily ornate neoclassical decoration that goes against what we often think of as a ‘classical’ building. The scenes are secular, but were originally designed to be religious to celebrate the patron saint of Paris.

The dome of the Pantheon is undergoing restoration right now, but instead there is a really cool photo project being exhibited. So the Pantheon has changed in usage so much over time, religious to secular, back again… back again… and now it’s showing contemporary art. Pretty cool.

The frosted windows in the ceiling of the Pantheon. Originally they were clear, but when it was turned into a secular building the windows were frosted in order to make it feel more sombre. All of the windows in the walls were bricked up too.

Showing the windows in context.

The huge secular sculpture that now dominates the ‘altar’ end of the building. Above the painting at the back is a beautiful Christian painting of Christ.

Love locks on the bridge to Notre-Dame.

I find the love locks kind of weird. Like, you’re trying to say that your love will last forever or something and I’m just not sure it works that way. Or that you should put yourself under pressure to try and make that happen. Relationships are better without pressure.

Also – stop breaking the fucking beautiful bridge.

More love locks – including a remarkably beefy one. That couple were optimistic!

The afternoon was given over to a lecture discovering the Hôtel’s in the Marais district. Not hotels as well know them, but private residences.

Hôtel de Sens – that hole above the door was for pouring boiling oil on unwanted visitors. It’s most likely not real though. They’re called apotropaic features – they’re designed to put people off visiting unless they have business.

A 20th century Jewish Synagogue in Marais. Amazingly this is made out of cement cast to look like stone, and is by the designer of the Paris metro entrances.

Double bass busker with trumpet player. \m/

The cloisters in Place des Vosges.

Hôtel de Sully – which I now need to write an essay about.

April 5, 2015
Talking about videogames

So I had my first meeting about my ISM today, discussing what makes a videogame art, what might make it design instead, how different institutions have coped with the issues of displaying videogames in galleries and what makes a good videogame exhitbion.

In preparation for my meeting I was reading a book called The Art of Videogames. It says lots of interesting things, I’m sure there will be lots of blogs about the interesting things it says (and that other books say) in the future.

It discusses the idea (on page 186) that gaming criticism isn’t yet at the level of discussion needed to situate it within the wider understanding of culture and arts. It argues that videogame criticism is not advanced enough with it’s theoretical understanding of it’s place within the arts. That it needs to move from ‘game reviews’ into something more substantial.

The problem is, Tavinor suggests, that game reviews tend to revolve around a rather one-sided and ‘fanboy’ish account of the game. Hell, major developers have their own magazines that produce reviews of their games – you think they’re ever going to be honest? The fact is that in this kind of situation somebody has to pay the bills, and if you’re writing for a magazine it’s generally going to be the advertisers. And the advertisers in videogame magazines tend to be people with a vested interest in you giving their produce a good review. This doesn’t tend to happen in the art world (as a counter-example). The most respected reviews tend to be in national newspapers – they have their own political slant, but they’re rarely influenced by the backers that they have in quite the same was as, oh I don’t know, Nintendo Magazine. Even the glossy art magazines like Frieze are known for their unbiased editorial opinion, I’m not sure I can think of a gaming magazine that quite can say the same.

So you think to yourself that perhaps there will be some more meaty reviews on the internet, where people aren’t being influenced in the same way by advertisers. The problem here is that the fanboy culture is really, really strong and players will be loyal to a franchise or a design studio to the extreme. Fanboyism has seen a massive rise over the past decade or two, and one the places that is truly bad for it is within gaming. In addition the gaming community isn’t the most unbiased community in the world, but I’ll leave the #GamerGate remarks alone for fear of more rape threats.

You see, I read game reviews and I find them… dull. They often provide a good factual insight into the game. It has good playability, the shadows are rendered so well, the storyline isn’t quite so hot. It might tell you a bit about why this game is important or if it’s a new franchise or something.

Here’s a paragraph from the Gamespot review of the remastered Grim Fandango:

That isn’t to say Grim Fandango doesn’t harbor its minor annoyances. It’s easy, for instance, to walk into that elevator in Rubacava by accident when you wander too close and descend to ground level, only to have to get back in and rise again to the top. More relevant is the remastering itself, which might leave you disappointed in light of the dramatic visual transformations we see in remakes like Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty!, or remasters like Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. You can see the differences between the old version and the remaster with a click of a button, and you’ll note that environments and cutscenes haven’t changed in any meaningful way. Granted, Grim Fandango’s background art remains vibrant, but the new, smooth character models and shadows sometimes look out of place as a result. I often found myself sticking with the original models just because they looked more natural in front of the low-resolution backgrounds.

And here’s a paragraph from Brian Sewell’s review of the Matisse Cut-Outs exhibition:

Enjoy the gaiety of colour. Be moved by the myth of the old genius, victim of a botched stomach operation, discovering new inspiration when told that death was on his doorstep. Be astonished by this sensualist turned saint, finding God in his own work, lying a-bed and drawing on the wall with a six-foot pole, cluttering every surface with the worst drawings this worst of draughtsmen ever did. Delight in the jaunty amusements of the infants’ school, but do not discard your critical faculties. Is what you see in this Matisse really a match for Michelangelo’s Adam, his nude youths, his prophets and sybils, his Last Judgement? What nonsense.

I mean you could argue that one is a virtuoso and the other is just a game. Except that Grim Fandango is considered one of the greatest cultural videogames ever produced. It has warmth and genuine emotion while stick ticking all the gameplay boxes. It does things that other games still have not done. It was – and still is – groundbreaking. Like Matisse and his cut-outs.

Or you could argue that the target audience for videogames is not the kind of person who could easily read and understand the kind of language in the Sewell review. Except I feel that really does do a disservice to both art and videogames. You see, when we enjoy art we don’t have any other options. This is what we start with – the advanced stuff. If you want to know about an artist then your simplest text is probably Gombrich’s book which is aimed at the beginner. Except even that is aimed at an advanced A-Level audience really. There’s no reason to dumb a subject down, your audience will raise their game if they want to understand what you’re saying.

I fear I might be straying into dangerous territory here, but I can’t help wondering sometimes if that’s the nerdrage problem with people like Anita Sarkeesian. Is it because she uses long words and talks about concepts that are just not discussed within the gaming world?

I’m kind of reminded at this point of Mark Grist and his ‘I’d like a girl who reads’ poem. It seems so shameful to enjoy using expressive vocabulary and to enjoy reading it. I mean, could you imagine how much more exciting debates and experience would be if we ‘used our added vocabulary to hold lively conversations’ in every day life about gaming?

I mean, I just want to put another video here and I’d like you to compare the words of Mark Grist and Aukes. I find watching the rap battles that he participates in to be a real sobering experience to see what some people think is good use of language. ‘The structures that you’ve got are what’s covered back in preschool’ at 4 minutes or so.

I guess you could say that gamers just don’t want to discuss videogames at this level, but then why do so many gamers insist that gaming is indeed a cultural and worthwhile activity? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t argue that gaming is an cultural art form akin to film or music and then not apply the same kind of rigorous debate that these other art forms have. The language we use to talk about videogames needs to grow up if it wants to be accepted as part of the wider arts.

But this will only happen as more people study the intersection between culture and videogames and we develop the vocabulary required to talk about the artefacts in a meaningful way. There’s relatively few books written on the subject and those people have not generally gone through their education with a focus on this particular subject (of course I’m not saying that their books aren’t insightful and useful, it’s perfectly reasonable to jump across different interests in that situation) but the real game-changing texts will only start to come about when people emerge from the system having spent many years studying it.

Videogames are still new to academic writing, but it’s really exciting where it’s going. I’m already sold on the idea of videogames as art however I think that the surrounding culture – like reviews and critical discussion – needs to catch up before we can convince the public majority of this opinion.

(Got lost somewhere in the middle. It’s pre-0730hrs and I’ve not had enough caffeine. Might expand later.)

February 6, 2015
The Moshchevaya Balka Kaftan
So we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And we saw this piece. And Adam said something along the lines of ‘that would be awesome for Carthage’. So here we have it, this would be awesome for Carthage.

It’s really great finding pieces in a good museum to use as a basis for costume because there can often be a fair bit of information about the piece. You especially know that you’re onto a good thing when it’s displayed in it’s own case in the middle of the gallery space, like this kaftan is.

Looking it up on the Metropolitan Museum website gives me this page. And there’s just so much info there to be had. Starting off with a fantastic picture – click to get the high resolution image and examine the garment in real detail. Far better than my rubbish phone camera shots – although my rubbish phone camera shots do serve a purpose. They let me see the back and they let me remember details that struck me at the time.

The pinky-red fabric is all modern conservation, the beige fabric and gorgeous patterned trim is all the original bits of this amazing 9th – 11th century kaftan from somewhere near what is modern Turkey.

Except it wouldn’t have originally have been beige. The Met are helpful enough to have provided information about the garment to help us understand what it might have looked like when it was made. The ‘white card’ description says:

The original linen coat (caftan), preserved in part from the neck to the bottom of the hem, is made of finely woven linen. A decorative strip of large-patterned silk is sewn along the exterior and interior edges of the caftan. A minute fragment of lambskin preserved as the caftan’s interior attests to its fur lining. The woven patterns on the silk borders of the caftan include motifs such as the rosettes and stylized animal patterns enclosed within beaded roundels, which were widespread in Iranian and Central Asian textiles of the sixth to ninth century. The colors used in the textile include a now-faded dark blue, yellow, red, and white on a dark brown ground. The decorated silk fabrics are a compound twill weave (samite in modern classification) and the body of the garment is plain-weave linen. Two slits running up the back of the caftan make it particularly suitable as a riding costume.

Did you know that apparently in many galleries and museums the white cards next to exhibits have to have be the same standard as the national reading age – which is about 12 in the UK. These were only ever intended as basic info. So far from this description I know that:
- It’s made of finely woven plain-weave linen.
- It has patterned twill silk for decoration.
- It had fur lining.
- The silk has stylised animals and beaded roundels which were common to Iranian and Central Asia at this time.
- The kaftan used to be dark blue, yellow, red and white on a dark brown background.
- It would have been suitable for riding in.
But we need more!

Linked to the page on the Met’s website there are three journal articles written about the Kaftan and it’s matching leggings. The first is an introduction, the second is a genealogy study and the last is the conservators report on the piece. This last one is where the gold-dust lies. These three journal articles can tell us huge amounts about the garment beyond what the white card does.

Here are notes from the journal articles, with my own speculations:
- Other pieces of identical silk have been found – meaning that this was not an extraordinarily unusual design. It would most likely not have been for someone extremely important (like royalty or ruling class) because they would most likely have used more unique fabrics for their garments.
- The piece is most likely from Moshchevaya Balka, a burial complex that has had to contend with serious amounts of looting over the years during its excavation (which probably explains why this piece came on the art market in the mid-90s).
- The climate of the Near East means that textiles and whole garments are almost never recovered. They almost always perish because the conditions aren’t conducive to the preservation of organic materials. This means that this is one example of only a handful ever found – you can’t make assumptions that ‘all people from this area wore this kind of garment’ without other supporting evidence. But it certainly is a garment that someone in this place, at this time wore.
- Moshchevaya Balka was on historical trade routes that linked Central Asia, the Near East, southern Russia and the Black Sea. The garment could have been influenced by any of those places, or could have been worn by someone who was just passing through.
- It was made for a horseman. This is a more substantial statement than ‘would have been alright for riding horses in’. Perhaps it could have been made for a trader who would have ridden between places? Or maybe a soldier?
- We’re pretty sure they came from a burial site. People tend to be buried in their good clothes, so perhaps these were finery rather than everyday clothes?
- The survival of the silk is described as ‘miraculous’, again highlighting the fact that not many examples exist – certainly not in this kind of condition.
- The staining of the fabric is most likely due to the acidic material produced when the body breaks down. It wouldn’t have been some funky ancient tie-dye. Thankfully the fur lining seems to have protected much of the outer layer of fabric.
- The alkaline chemicals produced by the decomposition of the body changed the colour of the fabric. The safflower red dye (a pretty bright pinky red) turned to beige, and the indigotin blue (similar to modern indigo) turned to a grey-brown. However the brown bits have kept a reasonably true colour since they are acid sensitive rather than alkaline sensitive. This doesn’t seem important, except it potentially helps us look at other examples of textiles. Now each time we come across drab, beige colours in ancient garments we can make educated guesses at what they might have looked like before they were put in the ground for a few centuries.
- Cotton is noticeably absent from the finds in this region, indicating that this area might not have had access to it yet. Seems crazy to us today when cotton is cheap and in use everywhere, but it wasn’t always that way. If you’re trying to be authentic then cotton would not be the way forward. Linen and silk to stay authentic. Of course for LARP it’s generally about what looks cool, but you might want to stick close if you’re going for a particular look. (And this does make me want to research into what kinds of textiles would have been available in North Africa for the Carthage outfit).
- The staining on other garments examined by the conservators that were suspected to also be from Moshchevaya Balka suggest that they could be from the same body. This gives us a lead on possible under-garments for the kaftan. Here it is:
- That the conservators had several options when reattaching the fragments of materials onto backing cloth. They chose the style of garment that they felt was most likely, but still without a whole garment we don’t know if this was exactly how they would have been made.
- The kaftan would most likely have reached mid-calf on the wearer. Perfect for a fighting garment for a ~~bloodthirsty~~ well-mannered Carthaginian.
- Other representations in art of the steppe people suggest that this Kaftan could have been worn with a plain linen version underneath and a sheer but decorated kaftan over the top. When it was cold there could have also been a fur kaftan outer layer, along with accessories like belts and mitts. And boots. I love boots. But apparently layering was cool way back when and we weren’t the first to invent it.
- The triangular side pieces on the front cause the side seams to push to the back, consequently narrowing it in at the waist and essentially making it a fitted garment. This causes the sleeves to look like ‘wings’ on the back, but they give huge amounts of movement in the upper body – suitable for a rider.
- The sleeves had narrow wrists, probably to retain heat. Which is good for a Carthaginian in modern England.
- There are two long slits in the Kaftan below the hip line to enable movement in the lower body. While standing they would reveal the leggings a little, but while sitting on a horse or crouching they would reveal all of the decorated legging. This needs fixing and turning coolthentic rather than authentic – the Carthaginian will be wearing leather trousers under it. But I have a plan.
- It used a triple button and loop fastening – picture in my camera phone pictures above.
- The fact that the fabric was found to be cut from a pre-woven bolt, cut with immense skill and then sewn together finely indicates that this region was above average in it’s textile culture. Perhaps it would be erroneous to take this as an example of garments from the wider area at this time.
- The linen making up the majority of the garment was white – as can be seen on the back shot above.
- The large, decorative borders of fabric have been used in a previous garment. This could indicate either some sentimentality, or perhaps a thrifty owner who had the clothes remade into a newer and more suitable or fashionable style. It’s therefore unlikely that this would have been owned by someone very high status.
- Collar and cuffs are unknown. They could possibly have been in existence, they could possibly have been made from the same fur as the lining.
- The warp of the linen travels vertically downwards on all pieces when the kaftan is laid out flat with the arms outstretched. Including the lower arms. This may not have been an effective use of materials, which indicates some wealth.
- There’s no seam along the top of the wrist to shoulder line. The fabric was cut on a fold here.
- The seams were mostly flat felled seams, stitched towards the centre units.
- And then of course we get the really precious part of the journal article for making a replicaish. An actual diagram of the pieces that made up the reconstruction on show in the museum:
- It was likely to have been constructed by piecing together the top half of the garment and then following that by attaching the bottom half at the waistline..
- There are notes about how the front panel was put together. It was slit up the front and a neckline cut out, then extra panels were attached (2 and 3 in the diagram above) to make it double breasted.
- The side pieces – 4 and 5 above – are the aforementioned gores that push the side seams to the back. Take note here – the length of the side seam on the back part of piece 1 must be the same as the length of the front of piece 1 including pieces 4/5. That means the front of the garment could be shorter than the back – this requires a calculator and some Pythagoras. Presumably this is made up for by the fact that 10/11 are likely to be longer than piece 12, but it will look strange to modern eyes as we would expect the waist seam to fall consistently all around the body rather than being lower at the back.
- The sleeves are two separate pieces which might give the opportunity to insert decorative fabric or embroidery or something. On the original it is most likely that the lower sleeve portions would have been pieced from various offcuts. Thankfully fabric isn’t that scarce now since it’s all made by machine and I won’t be doing this.
- There are instructions for sewing on the lapel within the journal. Basically sew the piece to the outer edge of the garment, fold it back, turn the edge under and sew it to the centreish of the garment.
- It’s unknown if there would have been a decorative neckline.
- The two front panels extend around the body by 7cm due to the extra inserted panel. This indicates that this garment would have been reasonably close fitting rather than baggy. The ability to move comes from the extra space generated in the back due to the inserts and the splits in the side seams for leg movement.
- The front panels were seamed to the back panels down to the hip line (might want to make it waist line if I make a version for myself).
- One fastening inside on the right, one outside on the left and one on the breast on the left.
- Because the fur lining didn’t extend to where the silk decoration was continued inside the kaftan, a layer of wool wadding was inserted here to maintain the thickness and drape. Worth considering if I make a thicker, lined version.
- The dyes were poor quality in nature, perhaps indicating that the silk was at the cheaper end of the scale for what it was.
- It also appears that the weavers were in a hurry (due to tension differences in the material) which again indicates that this could be a cheaper silk than average.
- Female garments found in this area seem to take inspiration from Eastern Mediterranean culture, while male garments are often based on Eastern or Persian culture.
- Here’s an example of how it would have been worn – especially around the neck area.
So then I finished off by taking a quick look through the Vecellio book of costume (from the 16th Century and before) and there’s a remarkably similar garment in the Persian section, illustrating a soldier. Unfortunately Vecellio doesn’t make any comments about the kaftan, only the armour and the horses tack that he would wear. But it does reinforce the idea of kaftans as riding garments. I also really like the way that the front flap is fastened up to the belt. That might have to happen for fighting and stabbing.

There are also similar garments in the Hungarian and African sections of the book, although they tend to not be asymmetrical closures like this one.

So what have we learnt…
- That we have evidence for this kind of garment in the 9th-11th century, the 16th century and in relatively modern times. It’s entirely possible that it extended out way before the 9th century too, making it almost certainly suitable for Odyssey. While I’m adapting this for the Cartheginians it would also be really good for the Persians.
- That it would have been made for someone who was a rider. Could be a trader or a soldier. The amount of movement makes it quite likely it was a soldier.
- That it could potentially appear anywhere along the trade route from East to West, but it most likely was a garment that originated in the Near East.
- It wasn’t an overly high cost garment. It was nicer than ‘basic’, but not extravagant.
So there we have it. Time to make the pattern pieces!
February 4, 2015
Proposing to study video games

So I’d previously decided that I wanted to study photography and self portraits for my independent study module as part of my undergraduate degree.

I’ve changed my mind. Feminist photography critique is a massively over subscribed-subject. People aren’t saying exactly what I’d like to say, but there are people saying things that are very similar. What I really wanted was to find something that was close to photography but not photography. A subject where I could acquire skills that could be applied to photography (as well as other areas of contemporary art and design) but an area that also offered the tantalising possibility of creating genuinely groundbreaking research.

Video Games

You heard that right. Video Games. They’re very much an untapped resource when it comes to academic scholarship. Although there is comprehensive game design and game theory scholarship out there, there’s very little that focusses on the social implications of games. There’s lots of critique too, but out of critique comes scholarship and I plan to be riding that first wave.

Since I know that several people are interested in following what I do with this module I plan to blog about it. And for completeness you can download my initial proposal here:

Video Game ISM Proposal

Hopefully I’ll post more about my rational about choosing this as a subject later… but for now… to work!

November 4, 2014
What are art museums for today?

An excerpt from an essay I wrote earlier this year. Minus it’s introduction, conclusion, and paragraphs about how religion is the opiate of the masses, and art museums allow us to worship at the temple of artists.

But how do art museums choose what should fill their space? The acquisition of video games into MoMA’s collection[1] could be seen as giving the power of deciding what becomes art to the collective mind of the proletariat. Admittedly the acquisition is part of the design collections rather than the higher status art collection, but it does work to verify the taste of those that video games are aimed at. However Raph Koster asserts that popular entertainment, such as games, are accessible whereas art requires literacy.[2] This presents a problem within an institution where the framework is apparently built around education – how do you educate in a subject that is already theoretically accessible to all? It does also start to question why art should require literacy and education to understand, if video games are now classified as art and require no such consideration.

MoMA’s video game acquisition also highlights another role of some art museums today. Since its inception MoMA has always placed itself as an arbiter of taste, setting out with an aim to introduce the American public to the new European modern art.[3] It is unsurprising then due to its bold collecting strategy and its remit being all aspects of modern culture that it would decide to break the mould and define video games as art. Compare that to the Tate collection and the picture is very different. The Tate acquisition policy states that ‘Tate will only acquire works by artists who have demonstrated their ability over a reasonable period of time’ which presumably precludes non-established new media. However the Tate also work in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum so it could be unfair to consider just one of those institutions alone when new media may be more suited to the Victoria and Albert museum, for example.[4] This does highlight the different approaches afforded to art museums today, choosing to proactively define taste to their audience, or reacting to the tastes of society.

Within the press release for the video games acquisition MoMA also states that as a museum its goal is to study and preserve items, not just to merely display them.[5] This gives us the idea of an art museum as a repository of objects of worth to somebody, but the question is who. In the case of a private art museum it may be items considered to be of worth to the owner or individual curators, however a national art museum has a much broader challenge; it must in some way seek to collect and preserve items that are relevant to the taste of those who fund it. While on one hand that means the large corporate organisations that donate, on the other hand it will often mean the tax paying public. So perhaps we will see more video games entering the collections of major art museums in the future.

[1] “Video Games: 14 in the Collection, for Starters”, http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/11/29/video-games-14-in-the-collection-for-starters accessed on 23^rd April 2014.

[2] Raph Koster, “A Theory of Fun: 10 Years Later” (Slide 87), http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf accessed on 23rd April 2014.

[3] “The Museum in the Twentieth Century”, Lecture notes, Museums and Society, Dr. Elizabeth Darling, 20^th March 2014.

[4] “Tate Acquisition and Disposal Policy, November 2011”, http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/11111 accessed on 23rd April 2014.

[5] “MoMA Acquires 14 Video Games for Architecture and Design Collection”, http://press.moma.org/2012/12/moma-acquires-14-video-games-for-architecture-and-design-collection/ accessed on 23^rd April 2014.

October 20, 2014
Mythlore Costume – Using Blue in LRP costumes

I know that LRP isn’t historically accurate, but I don’t care. I’m an art history student and one of my favourite things to do is to research. Coming up with the concepts for S’s Mythlore costume has been a chance to research and take some inspiration from a culture that I’ve never really looked at before – Persia.

One of the things that I’m extraordinarily aware of as an art history student is the use and connotations of colour. When selecting the colours for the outfit I wasn’t just conscious of what would go well with his skin tones (he’s ginger so I’m keeping the colours muted) but also the colours that represent him as a character.

Initially I started off working with a palette of creams and browns, but it just felt too generic. I needed to introduce some other colours to create a statement about what he did. First came the blue, I won’t lie I have this gorgeous slate blue muslin that I’m itching to use on a project, and when I put it next to the grey linen that I picked up the other week they really just sung together.

But blue is problematic for me to use in kit. The problem with rich ultramarine blue is that before synthetic dye was created it was only possible to obtain this blue pigment from lapis lazuli rocks (the Egyptians also created Egyptian Blue, but the recipe was lost in the middle ages). And those rocks were only found in a handful of cave systems in Badakshan Province – modern day Afghanistan.

Ultramarine blue – the name of Lapis Lazuli once it has been made into pigment – is just the most beautiful blue and it’s the one that everyone seems to choose for their kit. They don’t generally use prussian, cobalt or cerulean because those blues just aren’t as eye-catching and wonderful. They use ultramarine, because it shines and sparkles in a way that you just don’t get from any other blue.

(ETA: Hadn’t also considered indigo blue – a different kind of blue but natural dye available from the East. My focus is on European art.)

I’m not saying here that people shouldn’t wear blue kit for LRP. Of course not, that would be ridiculous because it isn’t historical reenactment. However for my costume concept the use of blue sparingly is important.

Just so that we can get an idea of the kind of blue we’re talking about, here’s Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring.

And one of my other favourite uses of ultramarine blue in the Wilton Diptych.

During the Renaissance patrons would actually specify a value of ultramarine pigment that would be used in the finished piece. The more money you spent on ultramarine then the more wealthy you would appear. Ultramarine blue was a status symbol, designed to show your wealth.

Did we see a similarity between the Vermeer work and the colour scheme in my designs? If he can use golden/mustard yellow with ultramarine blue then I certainly can.

So the key is that I’m using the blue sparingly on prestige pieces. At the moment I’m going to use it to line and trim the robe and also to create the armour and sashes. But I’m using an extremely thin and delicate fabric, a muslin. Something that wouldn’t have required too much dye – in fact as little as possible. And it’s a dark shade of blue too, so perhaps it might have been created with the remnants of a grubby dye bath that had been used for other garments beforehand. Ultramarine was almost always used at full strength in paintings so as not to dilute it’s richness – or sometimes with white added to create a tint.

Fortunately this group have a concept of being down on their luck. Once more wealthy than they are now, which allows an opportunity to play with the idea of people holding onto their kit that was once a status symbol. That is why I’m hoping to be able to create fantasy detailing to the back of the robes – this was someone who once had the money to spend on fashionable clothes, but perhaps now has been forced to sell everything he owns, and just keep his favourite pieces.

The golden yellow gown on the other hand has a different kind of symbolism. This character is cowardly and doesn’t want to fight or get involved. Judas (of Jesus’ disciples fame) is almost always painted in yellow garments and from there yellow has developed a potential reading of betrayal and cowardliness when interpreting works of art.

Here’s Judas, fourth figure from the left hand side, wearing a blue shirt with a yellow robe, in Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

And in Giotto’s The Kiss of Judas.

Yellow is not a colour of cloth that was not difficult to get hold of. In fact the Roman’s used to due their white clothes using urine. How… pleasant.

But anyway, since yellow cloth is available with far more abundance than blue, I decided to go with it for the base layers, which require far more cloth than any other piece. Yellow also has connotations of sickness and disease, appropriate for a physic I think. I’m not sure where that idea comes from, I’ve not managed to throw up any historical research (although I admit, I have not delved into any academic journals to write this – I’m doing it all from my head and class notes). If I was to make an educated guess I would assume it is due to the colour of infection. Lovely.

So there we have it. The reasons that I chose certain colours for this costume.

I also have another concern about this costume though, a little colour related. We’ve chosen muted colours deliberately. If this is a costume for a desert dwelling person, then strong colours would not stand up to the constant bleaching from the sun. Especially since this is a character who is down on his luck and may well be spending time travelling from place to place. And as I said before this kit is old, bought in times when things were easier.

But lots of larpers see Persian and other Eastern influenced nations as an excuse to wear lots of colour, so I’m afraid that this costume might stick out for those reasons. And also because of the fact we’ve opted to create entirely out of natural materials, which means linen and cotton basically for this one. The Eastern influenced nations across games seem to prefer often to use synthetic materials that have been heavily printed and so forth.

Oh well, hopefully it’ll fit in!

July 5, 2014
A Time to Dance

Listen to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015mzl8

Bloody excellent.

A Time To Dance

In July 1518 a terrifying and mysterious plague struck the medieval city of Strasbourg. By the time the epidemic subsided, heat and exhaustion had claimed many lives, leaving thousands bewildered and bereaved.

The South Bank, London. 2011. Is it happening again?

By Julian Simpson. Based on an original idea by Anita Sullivan.

Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.

June 27, 2014
Female Agency in Art

OR: WHY MY WORLD VIEW JUST GOT FUCKED.

The problem with learning is that sometimes you learn things that you wish you could unlearn.

I’d been quite happy with my art historical world view provided by such feminist scholars as Linda Nochlin and others from the 1970s era of rewriting the canon. The argument that there are few women artists in the historical ‘white male canon’ because they simply weren’t allowed to be there for various reasons sat well for me. I liked this explanation, it’s neat and it allows you to write with a confident view that could easily be backed up with good sources.

Then somewhere around the late 1980s a bombshell got dropped. Someone said, ‘what if the women just… didn’t want to be artists?’. This… well… this causes me a problem.

In the same way that I don’t believe that women completely autonomously choose to be Page 3 models, I simply don’t believe that women through history would just simply choose not to be artists. I mean of course, some of them will choose. However I don’t think that choice would have just been as simple as ‘I’d rather be an engineer’ for example. Not least because that career path was, again, just not open to them for various societal reasons.

It’s kind of a bit like in your first Physics lesson at A-Level after successfully passing your GCSEs. When the teacher stands at the front of the class and basically goes ‘everything you learnt up until this point is pretty much bullshit’ and everything you thought you knew about light waves was destroyed. But then you realise that light can behave as both a wave and a particle and you understand how much learning you still have to do.

So that’s where I’m at right now. Feminist art history was simple. And now it is not. Now we have to consider that women may have made their own choices about their hobbies and employment however I still think that many of those choices will have been dictated by the heavily patriarchal world that was forced upon the women in question.

It’s tricky. But a good revelation going into my second year of study.

June 13, 2014
Why your pictures of naked chicks aren’t art

OR: I BELIEVE IN A THING CALLED CONTEXT

I want to start out by saying that this is a huge topic. I also think that the question ‘What is art?’ is a bit of non-question, so I’m going to skirt round it because really there’s only an ‘answer’ in the context of particular approaches to the academic study of art, and each approach has it’s own answer.

“It’s art because I say it is”

Dude, I totally understand where you’re coming from. You took a look at Duchamp’s ‘Readymades’ and reached the conclusion that if the world thinks an upside down urinal can be art, then certainly anything YOU make can be labelled art too. Or possibly you saw a Rothko, a Mondrian, or even an Emin and thought ‘I can do better than that’.

Well, Duchamp has an awful lot to answer for, I’m telling you now. You see these artists, they have context to their work. There is a message or a story in every image or sculpture, a reason why those works look the way that they do. Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ in particular is an expression of frustration at the art institution, subverting the salon culture (to which many of you aspire, I know) and rallying against the system. In some ways it was him that helped to *allow* you to say it’s art because you say it is. Instead of thinking ‘I could do better’ perhaps you should see his upside down urinal for what it is – the metaphorical great-grandfather of your naked chick. I know, that must really suck. An artwork that everyone thinks is so utterly banal couldn’t possibly be your inspiration.

However you are onto something with this argument. Clive Bell did write something persuasive about work needing to have “aesthetic emotion”. He argued that artwork should be a visceral experience that prompted a response. However both Bell and Kant argued that formalist qualities like composition and colour were the defining features of something being art, and that the most developed work had no subject, only form. I’m afraid that your naked ladies will almost always count as a ‘subject’, so that argument goes out the window too. (Plus… I’m not sure that photography in general has yet has grasped the importance of form – a discussion I’ve had several times with some rather good photographers).

“But X painted naked ladies”

I know, it’s so unfair. All these incredible artists in the past, they painted naked ladies. However you have to take into consideration the movement of time and culture when you’re making these kinds of comments.

For instance, during the Italian Renaissance nudity appeared to be primarily about the artist showing off their skill as a craftsperson. The meticulous observation and skill involved in painting the mens rippling muscles and the women’s contorted torso’s were really quite something. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever studied anything in the way that Da Vinci or Raphael did, but then again I’m not quite sure I fancy cutting up dead bodies and observing the way that the internal organs sit under the skin. Thankfully we have books for that now. But my point is that they were doing something genuinely unprecedented. As Vasari waxed lyrical, their ‘truth to nature’ was truly the high point of art. (Except later it turns out it wasn’t, he was wrong). But the sad fact is, that as a photographer you’re not producing groundbreaking pieces of artwork based on many, many hours of anatomy studies. You’re photographing a naked chick. It’s not quite the same and it takes an awful lot less skill… dedication… motivation… and so on.

I guess you might wonder why I’ve put a picture of Édouard Manet’s Olympia next to this paragraph. After all, Manet was famously part of the Parisian flâneur culture that basically objectified women for a laugh. Flâneurs were intelligent men in the 19th century who would stroll the streets of Paris and take trips to the parks or the theatre in order to watch people. Mostly women. Some of them, like Manet and Baudelaire would draw the women that they saw on these outings too. I mean, the modern day equivalent is a male photographer following a young woman around with his camera and long lens taking pictures of her. Oh wait…

But anyway, I included the very naked Olympia here for a reason. You see, although Manet was pretty much a pervy creep (although, he is marginally forgiven because he was ‘of his time’) he did paint his naked chicks with interesting context. You see, Olympia broke the mould (as did his painting of Suson in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère) because he understood that him and his mates were being creepy pervs and was actually commenting on it within his works.

Olympia isn’t just a naked chick lying on a bed in her finery being served by her black slave. No. She’s a prostitute. You see the way she’s staring at you? That was unprecedented for the time. She’s looking at you and accusing you, and I guarantee when you went with your wife to view the work in the polite company of the French Salon you would have been rather flustered and embarrassed. You see, she’s not only displaying herself as a prostitute, she’s reminding you that you use her services.

All that wonderful French Realist and Impressionist art that photographers love so much? Quite a large proportion is exploitative and objectifying images of hookers that they enjoyed fucking. Not sure I’d take that kind of culture as my inspiration. Unless of course I was producing some kind of counter-culture, revisionist comment on the dispositif of the white-male dominated art institution. However, I think most photographers are not.

A two-tier art system

Mostly art is defined by the art institution. Yeah, I’m afraid that’s people like the galleries, the dealers, the critics and the art historians. You’re probably not part of the art institution and so in the academic sense, you don’t really get a say on what counts as art. You almost certainly don’t get to judge your own work as being art. ‘So it’s all about the money!’ you cry. Well, yes and no. Money and art are intrinsically linked. As an artist gets more well known their work becomes worth more, and then when it reaches a certain point as an artist is worth more their work is more well known. (However, can you name the guy that exhibited at the Erotica trade-show several years ago who sold a single painting for £125k? No, nor can I. Worth doesn’t mean fame.)

However I suppose what I’m getting at is that, in my belief, there’s a two-tier art system at play. The top tier is obviously what we call art. It’s the works in the major galleries and art museums and the stuff that investors look to collect. It’s the pieces that we write about in essays for our undergraduate degrees and the stuff that regularly hits the news headlines. That’s fine, we’re pretty clear about what art is.

What about the second tier? I’d like to propose the use of the words craft, craftsmanship and artisan. But they’re shameful words aren’t they? We’ve been taught that craft is a thing that primarily women do in their spare time or to make practical items for the home. It has a bad reputation and the recent hipster interest in ‘making stuff’ hasn’t helped with that perception.

However craftsmanship is a wonderful thing. It relies on dedication, knowledge, skill and countless hours of practice. At the end of the day, most photographers are primarily interested in the technical side of photography, with creativity as an afterthought, it’s just the way that the medium has grown.

In fact, photographers regularly look down on artists who don’t appear to have a good technical grasp of photography. Just look at the response that artists like Andreas Gursky get. Despite his image ‘Rhein’ being the most valuable photograph ever sold, and it appealing to Bell’s ideas of significant form and therefore being wholly placed in the category of art by both academic writers and the wider art institution, we as photographers love to knock it down and say it’s not ‘proper’ photography. Whatever proper photography is.

But I saw this happen with the rise of ‘Front’ style images too (Yeah, I’ve been around the internet photography community for far too much of my relatively short life – about a third of it in fact). Initially lots of photographers really complained about Front style images (which I don’t really want to include here because I think they’re pretty abhorrent) but then after a few years they realised that they were a very quick way to gain popularity with the models. And so we’re now in some kind of weird Frontism era, with some photographers straying into Post-Frontism.

I’d love to see photographers being more honest about their work in the future, identifying as craftsmen instead of artists. Because if you’re focussing on the technical skills that’s really what you are. Lets reclaim the word away from the shameful label it has become and take it forward as a label for ourselves instead of the word art.

At the heart of it: Objectification

This is a really difficult thing to discuss and that’s possibly why I’ve left it until last. In a few paragraphs it has to be pretty simple too, so please excuse me if things are glossed over – I’ll address things further in future blog posts.

I wrote yesterday about how being a feminist is scary. You put your head above the parapet and write something about how you think that people treat women unfairly and you get rape threats. Yeah. It’s true. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that lots of women are afraid to speak out about issues like this, especially in a hobby/industry that is still so dominated by men. Mostly I’m telling you this so that you think twice before making comments about how I mustn’t be getting any sex, which is so often said in response to women talking about the way that photographers tend to objectify women (those comments even come from female models themselves sometimes – thanks ladies) or before superimposing a labia on my face, as happened to Mary Beard.

Anyway.

We don’t live in a vacuum. Just as we have to think of the context in which we produce ‘art’ we also have to consider the context in which we live. When you get down to it, the images that we make of models are loaded with cultural context and we simply cannot escape the fact that we live in a society that is still dominated by a patriarchal way of living. For the last several hundred years women have existed primarily as a thing to provide for men. From having babies and keeping the house clean to not being allowed their own sexual pleasure we’ve not really had the easiest time of it.

Where this comes into photography is that this patriarchal view of women informs the way that we look at them. John Berger, as early as the 1970s, wrote about how men watched and women watched themselves being watched. Laura Mulvey picked up the baton later and discussed the male gaze within cinema and you can largely extrapolate her views out to photography and then other kinds of artwork too. She argues that women are generally objectified because heterosexual men are in charge of the camera.

You might decide from this that the way to go would therefore be by trying to produce work that looks from another point of view, however this is very difficult. I am specialising in gender studies within photography as my academic discipline and despite understanding the arguments and looking at endless images, I find it extremely hard not to produce images that have a male gaze. You see, I’m cultured into it. I’ve been brought up being fed images in advertising that tell me how I should view the world. It’s only now that we’re starting to see things change, but that does hopefully mean that future generations should grow up being fed a more balanced diet of imagery.

But how does this affect your naked chicks being art? Well, it’s really quite simple. The objectification of women is rapidly becoming completely unacceptable. Viewing a woman as an object for sexual pleasure is an attitude that is slowly but surely being left in the past. Posing a woman for gratification of the male gaze is about as desirable as casual misogyny. In fact it is casual misogyny.

I know that lots of people will be reading this who are from a slightly older generation. I’m very tolerant, it’s taken me a long time to explain to my wonderful father why things like Page 3 are unacceptable but he gets it and understands it. The thing is, you have to remember that casual misogyny belongs to the 1970s. The 1970s was a time when things like driving home from the pub after a few drinks with no seatbelt on and Jimmy Saville were also acceptable.

There’s no place within the the world of art or photography any longer for casual misogyny, which includes the objectification of women. If you’re objectifying a woman there had better be a damn good reason for it and you’d better be making an extremely salient observation on the world around you. It’s as much as a faux-pas as casual racism – which unfortunately still has a place within amateur model photography too.

So when can I photograph a naked chick?

You can photograph a naked chick anytime you like.

I’d like to encourage a liberated wave of photographers. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with photographing a nude woman, except when it’s nasty, objectifying titillation that you’re pretending is art.

I dream of a world where people shoot fantastic images of nude people that don’t outright objectify them and draw from an oppressive culture. This is a long way off though and it needs some bold photographic pioneers. And we won’t always get it right, but sometimes we won’t get it wrong either.

Here’s hoping.

May 13, 2014
ISM – Self portraits musing

So I’d initially set out on this journey having a fairly resolute idea of the pictures that I wanted to go into my ‘exhibition’. There were Nan Goldin and Tracey Emin, Ana Mendieta’s video work, Robert Mapplethorpe and then David Bailey for his hard and unrelenting stare.

And then it started to niggle me. I don’t have permission to use these artworks in a print format. I know that there are arguments about ‘fair use’ and educational use and that’s all well and good. *Legally* I could use them. However it just didn’t sit right. I wanted to do a real exploration into the subject and perhaps discover something new.

Of course, as it always happens, the project grows in my head. Wouldn’t this be cool if… people could buy the book and my essays. If it was an ‘artists book’ (more about that below). Wouldn’t this be cool if… we could pull this together into an exhibition. I like to dream. And I like to dream big. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere it’s always great fun to dream. So instead I’ve been considering scouting out some relative unknowns – although I have to admit, I will still be contacting the ‘big names’ to find out if I could potentially use their images in the book.

So about this artist book idea, that’s an interesting proposal to me. Artists have always made books of their work (well, in the last hundred years or so anyway) and so the artist book is a medium with history. It’s interesting. But can a curator make an artist book? Is that what my book would be? Perhaps it would be a curators book. Doesn’t sound as fancy as artists book, does it? It’s the same idea on the whole though.

I’m hoping to reach out over the next few months to artists who have shot self portraits and see if they might be interested in coming together in this project. Its not going to make them any money, but if the project comes together over the next year and something interesting comes out of it, maybe there’s a group exhibition in there too. Certainly I have access to the space at Oxford Brookes – I could submit a proposal for an exhibition and we could go out and crowdsource the funding.

It’s a bit of a strange way round to doing things. Conceiving the catalogue first and then potentially if it works looking at an exhibition but I don’t think it’s impossible. And it would certainly start to get my name out there as a writer, book producer and curator.

These are just ideas at the moment, nothing is set in stone. I have a few people in mind I want to approach and I’m hoping that they’ll say yet. But we shall see. Ultimately though, I need to write two essays on a body of photographs. I mustn’t lose sight of the goal.

But the goal is coming along nicely and I’m starting to get my teeth into some serious research. Today I’m attending a panel of six papers on the subject of Exhibition Cases as Experimental Spaces. It’s been rich with source material and ideas and I plan to draw huge inspiration from Richard Hamilton’s catalogue designs for the ICA. The idea that a political message can be put across in a catalogue is an interesting one. Thursday I saw a series of papers on Feminist Futures in Art Practice, Theory and History which also ties in nicely to what I’m doing. I believe that there are particularly discourses around the way that ‘men’ and ‘women’ represent themselves through photographic self portraiture – now more than ever with the rise of the camera phone selfie. And on top of that yesterday was a whole day on the subject of Expanded Photography where various academics and artists examined what photographers have done in the past that is outside the box, as it were.

I hope to bring all these of these aspects together in my exhibition catalogue project, very much using it as an experimental space for the curation of photography. I’m hoping it will be really interesting, not just to me and my tutors but perhaps to a wider audience.

And of course if you’d like to nominate an artist who has worked with self portraiture, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

April 12, 2014