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Journalism
Reviews
and Articles from the pen of Frescom
I am not a journalist but
I can be dead pretentious. On this page you will find my collected works. I
have always enjoyed writing. Many thanks to the Graham Bower and Jerry
Carpenter and everyone at www.foocha.com for allowing me to let off steam on
their site as well as all the folks down in Basingstoke who were so
supportive with the Llama.
Virgin Penguins
What operating system does God use? Could the
wrathful creator of the Universe possibly look upon Windows and like what He
sees? Its seems very unlikely to me that with his old testament temper He
could put up with the blue screen of death without turning His PC into a
pillar of salt. Would He really have designed the Universe in Microsoft Paint
and would He really trust windows to be secure against attacks from fallen
angels?
But there have long been alternatives to
Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system. Tux the Linux penguin is the cute
angelic symbol evangelized by Linux users. Mac users are like Shakespearean
lovers, writing sonnets to their machines. Apple founder Steve Jobs said that
his proudest achievement was to create an operating system that people loved.
When was the last time you hugged your Windows PC? Bill Gates created a
system that above all makes money. Windows as an operating system can be
frustrating and irascible but it was always profitable and is now on 90% of
the western world's desktops..
Recently, Microsoft was forced by US officials
to admit that they had exaggerated the security and privacy features of its
Passport internet product. Passport holds personal data, email addresses and
credit card numbers for sites like Hotmail and has over 7 million users. The
system is not secure but that did not stop the Redmond giant from bidding to
sell it to the US government to verify the identity of American citizens
federal employees and allowing businesses to pay tax online. God would not use
Microsoft for that reason alone but the situation is worse than that.
While Passport can be fixed, Windows, the
operating system itself, is not secure and never will be. Microsoft VP Jim
Allchin is probably as wealthy as God but he recently stated, under oath,
that there were flaws in Windows so great that they would threaten national
security if the Windows source code were to be disclosed. He mentioned
Message Queuing, and immediately regretted it.
Windows might possibly be the most insecure
piece of viral code ever to infect a computer, according to Chris Paget who's
found a geek fascinating hole in the Win32 Messaging System which he believes
is irreparable. He posted his findings to the BugTrak mailing list. His paper
discussed the flaw and gave examples of how to exploit it. Despite being shut
down within hours more than 200,000 people downloaded a page describing how
to take advantage of the gaping security hole. The cat is out of the bag so
perhaps its time to put a penguin in your box.
Linux and Windows both work with messages. The
operating system sends messages to the applications on your desktop. The
difference is that Linux messages have return and sender addresses so an
application knows who is asking it to do things. That makes it safer because
the programs will only do what they are told to do. Windows has not got a
system of authenticating messages. Any decent hacker can simply fire messages
at your desktop and see what happens. Chris Pagets' example does just that
and uses common tools and simple code to give hackers access to things that
should be private. That is not to say that Linux is impregnable but without a
corporate giant to loathe fewer hackers write viruses or mount attacks
against Linux.
Curious of my happy-clapper Linux brethren's
enthusiasm for an operating system and becoming increasingly worried about
the sensitive client data on my computer I determined to convert from
orthodox Windows to the radical faith of Linux. This is nothing less than a
religious conversion on a par with Paul's journey to Damascus. I met derision
and resistance at every step of the way. Colleagues asked me questions that
made me wonder if it was all worth it and ever-present was the temptation to
give up. Mostly they asked why. Installing Linux is just as easy as
installing Windows. It took me only a few hours to get Red Hat 7.4 installed
on my machine. It took a little longer to access the company network and to
configure it to work with our mail server and my sound card refused to work.
Linux is an open source operating system there is no corporate giant
directing development. It was and is still developed by a Diaspora of
programmers who do it out of love and not because of some company policy
handed down from the boardroom.
How's this for customer service: When I still
failed to get my sound card working I wrote a mail to some guy in Sweden and
he happily wrote me a driver. The card now works. But, as the saying goes,
'no-one ever got sacked for buying Microsoft'. We have Bill Gates to thank
for putting a PC in every home and for standardizing modern computing. The
Redmond giant gave us computing that has a standardized look and feel but we
lost something along the way.
There is a clear choice between making
computers easy to use and giving the user control. The more the machine does
for you the less it does what you want. Bill Gates and his disciples took the
former route giving the people a graphic and appealing interface, making all
the programs look the same so they felt familiar and either buying up the
competition or writing software that was nearly as good as the best out
there. The strategy worked very well.
To take just one example, Word is now a
standard business tool. Microsoft is not an innovator. They did not invent
the word processor application but they are responsible for standardizing our
expectations and crushing much of the competition. Remember AmiPro, Electric
Pencil, Apple Write I, Samna III, WordPerfect or Scripsit? The stuffed head
of Micropro International, the inventors of the world's first commercial word
processor, WordStar, is hanging on the hunting lodge wall in Redmond. The
advantage of a Word document is that you can send it almost anywhere and be
pretty sure the recipient will be able to open it and read it. The downside
is that Word is frustrating and the recipient will be hard pushed to use your
fiddly macros and will probably lose it and ask you to send it again. Word is
not a bad application it's just that there are others out there and 90% of us
don't even know there is a choice.
The alternative is a myriad of competition.
Leave Microsoft and the one God is replaced by a perplexing array of
pretenders and demigods. Perhaps there is too much competition. I wrote this article
on my new Linux install using AbiWord, Kwrite, Emacs and anything else I
could lay my typing fingers on. Some were good and some were bad. Although,
Microsoft wrote none of them I couldn't help comparing them all to good old
Word.
But that is just the point, Linux liberates you
from the world of Windows. Freedom means more choice. Products like Open
Office and Evolution emulate Outlook and Word so well you will feel at home
immediately and then you are free to explore your new surroundings. Like Moses
parting the Red Sea and leading the Children of Windows out of Egypt you will
find the Promised Land. Yet although there is fruit and honey you know that
you are going to miss what you know and it's going to take time to get used
to the new flavors.
But Linux has now come of age. You will not
find it installed on the desktops of many businesses in the West but all that
is changing and you and your business need to be ready. The Germans, always
first to have their blankets by the pool, have taken the lead. They are
currently ridding themselves of expensive Windows licenses. Germany has
signed up IBM for a major public sector computer contract, dealing a blow to
software giant Microsoft in the process. IBM announced it would offer the
German Government offices deep discounts on computer systems based on Linux,
rather than Microsoft's Windows. Germany's Interior Minister, Otto Schilly,
said the move would help cut costs and improve security in the nation's
computer networks. "We are raising computer security by avoiding a
monoculture, and we are lowering dependence on a single supplier," he
said in a statement. Go to south East Asia however and you will be hard
pressed to find any Windows machines at all. Two years ago the Chinese
attempted to ban Windows 2000 reasoning it would hamper development of
applications by Chinese developers. Now they are going one step further and
putting a huge effort into developing an alternative operating system.
Revenue from the open source Linux operating
system dipped in 2001 after two consecutive years of substantial growth, but
is still on track to become a $280m market by 2006, according to the latest
research from IDC. Revenue for the open source operating system is expected
to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28% for the next five years.
Linux is simply not going to go away and looks set tackle Microsoft head on.
When the world collapses, Christ will return
and post a message to www.SermonOnTheMount.com. He will be a Linux user. He
was misquoted first time around and this time He will make it clear - the
geek will inherit the earth.
© frescom August 2002
BASINGSTOKE LLAMA
Before Adtools and I worked for a small
financial software house in Basingstoke (where? - ed.) called CFS (never
heard of 'em - ed.). In my spare time I started an in-house magazine which
was intended to educate, inform and entertain. I called it the Basingstoke
Llama (Lease Loan Asset Management Applications) - bizarre but that was the
business. Its all handcoded HTML wrapped up in a self executing zip file.
Basingstoke Llama November 2000
Basingstoke Llama December 2000
Basingstoke Llama January 2001
Basingstoke Llama February 2001
Below are some of the reviews I have written
for the pages of www.foocha.com. I have been contributing on and off to its
pages for a little while now. The site is very popular (apparently it is very
big in Scandinavia) and is basically an opinionated and outspoken reviews
page. All the reviews are under 500 words and they cover a wide variety of
themes from books to films to art.
Beatles Anthology by the Beatles
This maybe the overdue accompaniment to the
Beatles Anthology trilogy but after the relative failure of the re-release of
Yellow Submarine this is a return to form. Apple, under the direction of
executive producer Neil Aspinall, previously the Beatles' road manager,
launched Anthology in 1995 with a TV documentary and a 3-CD set, which sold
45 million copies worldwide. But the delay, caused by legal wrangling, has
added moment to this weighty 7lb tome. In part this is due to sensible
timing. The book is published close to John Lennon's birthday, the 20th
anniversary of his death and the opening of the John Lennon museum in Tokyo.
The autobiography of The Beatles has already
attracted advance orders for 1.5 million copies and will appear in eight
different languages including Chinese. Total sales are expected to exceed 20
million and it is expected to earn them more than $2.51 billion. Yoko Ono,
the widow of John Lennon who was shot dead in New York in 1980, will receive
an equal quarter share of the profits, although she did not participated in
the project.
Derek Johns, of literary agency AP Watt, said
that the level interest in the group's official memoir heralded an
astonishing publishing event. "These are large numbers," he said.
" Advance orders in the UK topped 250,000. Here, sales of 50,000 for a
hardback is considered impressive. The Beatles have worldwide appeal that
very little fiction or nonfiction has. You need something like the Beatles to
accomplish sales like this."
Sir Paul has an estimated fortune of $1.42
billion, even Ringo, the poorest Beatle has more than $175 million under the
mattress. However, the Beatles say that they have written the book in order
to put the record straight following the publication of an estimated 400
unauthorized books on the band. Geoff Baker, the Beatles' press officer,
added: "The truth is more important to them than the money."
But the book itself is a wonderful treat. Every
spread has color and vivacity. It feels like a family scrapbook lavishly
illustrated and packed with a wealth of detail and illuminating quotes. There
is much color but little depth. The Beatles have opened their personal and
management archives, filling the book with 13,000 photographs, documents and
memorabilia. This is the story of the four boys, who witnessed the calm at
the epicenter of a world gone mad,.
"Even for us, it was surprising to talk
about the past--because you don't do that in the band," said McCartney.
"The early memories in the book are to me the most exciting--the parts
about John especially. Because I loved him, and still do."
The history of the band is charted faithfully
from dumping Pete Best and then turning to "a guy who had a beard and
was grown-up and was known to have a Zephyr Zodiac". George recalls that
"Pete would never hang out with us with Ringo, it felt rocking."
Paul is his usual disarmingly under-whelmed self but elicits the thrill of
success "I remember getting into the limo and hearing a running
commentary, "They have just left the airport..." It was like a
dream. The greatest fantasy ever." The transitional Rubber Soul is
revealed as "the pot album" and George's favorite. Bob Dylan, as
ever, put his finger on it immediately: "Oh I get it, you don't want to
be cute anymore!"
This at heart is their rather sweet account.
There are no stark revelations only breathless reports of meeting Elvis being
mesmerized by his TV remote control, and of discovering the joys of double
tracking at Abbey Road. John, we learn, was convinced he was "too
old" to make it at 21 and he is remembered with fond affection
throughout. George remembers their first stage make-up "we looked like
Outspan oranges". Ringo still the perceived comic of the outfit claims
"We were flying from London to Glasgow once, and there were only three
seats left on the plane, and in my naivety I said 'I'll stand"
Interwoven with these are the recollections of
such associates as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin, and
spokesman Derek Taylor who as the original editor of the book has seamlessly
interwoven the voices of the Beatles and their entourage. Taylor died before
the book was completed.
The Beatles were in no position to appreciate
the seismic changes they were setting in motion but writers like Philip
Norman, Michael Braun, Hunter Davies and Mark Lewisohn have long since set
their achievements in context. "We had a good time doing it," says
Paul McCartney in a recent interview. "And it brought us closer. In
truth, we had healed the wounds already when we decided we wanted to do the
book."
What we get is the Beatles themselves; it's
warm, frank, funny, poignant, and bold. These are the lads we have known all
our lives and still love. There really is not much for them to put straight
but like all their musical output we do not feel shortchanged only thoroughly
entertained.
Matthew Fresco
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Pantheon $17.00
Is there is any book more deserving of UK publication
than Alan Lightman's fabulous Einstein's Dreams? Never published over here it
was a smash hit in the US where it achieved cult status and huge sales. This
is a slim volume that will leave a massive impression on you. If you have
never used an online bookseller such as Amazon.com then this is your reason
to use it today. I am not kidding - go and buy this book. On second thought
go and buy several copies as this book is simply screaming to be lent to your
friends.
I was introduced to this novel by the noted
master horologist (that's a watchmaker to you and me) Anthony 'How' Howarth
who lent it to me on pain of death if I did not return it. I never did return
it and he never returned my imitation Rolex. I don't regret losing the watch
at all. I read the novel and immediately lent it to a friend who never
returned it to me either. I am now on my third copy and as I write this
review I am preparing to put this one in the post to a man I barely know in
Eire.
When Saul Bellow said that 'people can lose
their lives in libraries, they ought to be warned; I am certain he had this
book in mind. Alan Lightman is not a novelist. He is a physics professor at
MIT who had never written a novel before.
At ten minutes past six a young Albert Einstein
realizes that he can discard all his multi-various dreams on the nature of
time. One has risen to prominence. One is compelling. But the patent clerk
cannot dismiss the dreams. All of them are possible, any of them might exist,
but not here. They could only exist in other worlds. Einstein's Dreams are
enchanting and the book's mere 179 pages take us through a selection of
alternate time. In each chapter time behaves differently to the way it works
here. In one world people are faced with time flowing backwards, in another
it slows with altitude so the people live on the mountains and only venture
to the valleys in rushed adventures.
This is Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and this
is Martin Amis' Times Arrow. But this is so much more subtle and beautiful
than any other time travel novel I have ever read. It has a lightness of
style and an exactness of language that makes it more valuable than a physics
lesson and more profound than a novel ought to be capable of. Indeed Salman
Rushdie has compared it to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It is at once
intellectual and provocative. Rushdie sums up the mesmerizing effect when he
say 'quite frankly I have not been so excited by a novel, let alone a first
novel for a very long time'.
Matthew Fresco
The Emperor's New Groove
Mark Dindal, 2000
Its time to get Groovy! The Emperor's New
Groove is another smash hit from Disney that will make you and your kids
laugh despite yourself and despite its numerous shortcomings. It's funny,
irreverent and, well, groovy.
The Emperor's New Groove was originally
intended to be another one of those 'adventure epics', complete with talking
animals and those sickly sweet musical numbers. But the Disney top brass took
a look at Kingdom of the Sun (the original title), and they were not happy with
the film. The rumor goes that it was felt 'Kingdom' would not stand up well
alongside their other classics. Perhaps, Disney executives did not have to
sit through Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Thankfully, they scrapped
huge portions of the project and decided to go with a straight slapstick
comedy.
The result is a mixed blessing. It owes more to
Aladdin than it does to the Lion King. The comedy is repetitive and tugs at
your popcorn pleading for a laugh. But after half an hour it is hard to resist
Disney's wide-eyed animation and endearing humor. So your heart melts and the
laughs start to come thick and fast. This is a knowing film. It knows that it
is not original, it knows it has to step carefully to avoid the enormous plot
holes and it knows a good gag is not as good as a bucket load of poor ones
laid on thick and fast. The cast play true to type, Eartha Kitt plays Yzma,
the same cat she's played for the last 40 odd years. David Spade plays the
cocky charismatic character that brought him to prominence in Saturday Night
Live. But Patrick Warburton's nice but dim henchman, Kronk, steals the show.
He gets all the best lines, but Warburton simply plays the character of Putty
from Seinfeld but adds a sarcastic weariness to the role that is disarmingly
funny.
When George Lucas made Howard the Duck he
risked everything on the idea that we would all love a good duck gag. He was
wrong. Ducks just ain't funny and nor are llamas. It's the situations the
animal gets into that we have to empathize with. Being a duck or for that
matter a pot bellied pig is not enough, we need to recognize ourselves in the
character. Here the central gag is that Eartha Kitt who is covetous of his
power and position turns Prince Kuzco into a llama. Disney doesn't attempt a single
llama gag. Lets face it how many gags are there with a llama walking into a
bar? Instead we have a morality tale that every parent and child will
recognize easily. Thankfully the moral is not rammed home so the selfish
prince is never entirely redeemed. Here the pratfall rules and the poo-poo
piety takes a backseat.
You have to pity poor Sting. By all accounts he
leaped at the chance to make a Disney movie. After all, Elton John and Phil
Collins cruised into the Oscars on the back of similar projects. This should
have been his crowning moment. Geordie lad makes good, a knighthood within
his grasp. But the poor lad recorded all the songs only to find that only one
made it into the movie and that is safely tucked away right at the end with
the final credits. Phew - Disney executives have created a lucky escape for
us all.
Matthew Fresco
On Writing: A Memoir by Steven King
256pp Hodder £16.99
HG Wells and Steven King have much in common,
neither cares for character nor plot, critical acclaim nor style. Both have
huge audiences that turn the serious novelist dollar-green with envy. Perhaps
it is for these reasons that they are both disparaged by the serious critics
but adored by their fans. For his efforts King draws a salary of more than
$50 million a year which must go some way to relieving his artistic
sensibilities.
On Writing is in many ways his apology. It is
split into three sections. First we are treated to the biography of a
dysfunctional modern American who like Elvis collapses under the weight of
his own success. King is a recovering alcoholic. He admits that he wrote The
Tommyknockers and Cujo while utterly out of his face on a heady mixture of
cocaine and booze. He became the monster Jack Torrance from The Shining. With
so much money in the bank his bender was a twenty year weekend. Unlike Elvis
he survived. He has not had a drink for twelve years and has come to
epitomize the hero of the American Dream, saved only by the love of his
family.
His work can be confused, even fragmentary.
`Often distorted and ill written he is always fascinating. In an
unpretentious way he is engaging but above all he grabs our sympathy and
turns us into page turning monsters capable of neglecting our mobile phones
in a hungry passion to reach oh so predictable conclusions.
HG Wells chose science fiction as way of asking
simple 'what if' questions. King does the same with the horror genre. While
HG Wells wondered how we would cope with a time machine Steven King wonders
how we would cope with a killer car. Michael Crichton asks what if a dinosaur
came back to life but King makes us watch it tear the local pharmacist apart.
Working with high concepts may attract the Hollywood bucks but big ideas
often have little stories. While this may alienate him from the serious literary
establishment it has endeared him to millions of readers who simply cannot
get enough of this fantasy and escapism.
Running through all his work is a dark seam of
midtown American. Both King and his novels are down to earth and friendly. Looking
back at the last century's hunt for the great American novel it is King who
has probably encapsulated more of what is it is to be ordinary by placing the
common man in an extraordinary world.
The horror comes from a deeply wretched and
lonely childhood. His father left to buy a packet of cigarettes and never
returned. In his latest novel Heart of Atlantis we learn how he hated his
mother and found solace in pulp horror and science fiction.
Living in a trailer park, his wife Tabitha
supported his early writing by working in a Dunkin' Donuts. With the
publication of Carrie in 1974 the rags to riches story was complete. But King
is a teacher and in the central part of the book he tempts us to emulate his
success. With a blueprint of how to become the worlds most read author he
invites us to enter a competition to write in his style and win the chance to
be published along side him.
King asserts that "this is a short book
because most books on writing are full of bullshit". He eschews
character and plot because they do not reflect real life. Like Anthony
Burgess he never makes notes, but simply locks himself away and writes
without editing, starting from a simple idea. The ideas come from daily walks
and he writes listening to maddeningly loud rock music.
The King style bible is not complex, in his
view "the adverb is not your friend". But he has little else to say
that is not obvious, "in my view, stories and novels consist of three
parts narration, description and dialogue". What we have here is a guide
to writing for those who know that there is a blockbuster inside them that
will never see the light of day. But for King this is a self-help book,
written to bolster his confidence after his recent accident.
The best of it is in his description of how the
primitive urge to write saved his life after the accident. In the final
chapters he relates the gruesome story of how in June 1999 he was on his
usual four mile stroll when a blue Dodge mini-van, driven by Bryan Smith
rolled out of control over a hill top almost killing him. He is on home
territory with this personal horror story, "Smith wasn't looking at the
road on the afternoon our lives came together because his rottweiler had
jumped from the very rear of his van into the backseat area where there was an
Igloo cooler with some meat stored inside". The novelist bounced off the
windscreen and lay dying by the side of the road. With his lap turned the
wrong way and his legs broken "like so many marbles in a sock", a
collapsed lung and a bit of a headache, his first thoughts were that "I
have been nearly killed by a character right out of one of my own
novels". More bizarrely Smith recently died in suspicious circumstances.
You cannot read any of his novels without
liking him. He lavishes praise on his doctors and his family who nursed him
through what must have been a terrible ordeal. Most impressive of all King
began writing again almost immediately. He wrote while still in a wheelchair
using writing as therapy.
Since the accident he has published a novel for
the web Riding the Bullet, a teleplay and a 900 page novel Dreamcatcher as
well as this memoir. He is not so much an author as a writing machine. He
writes 2,000 words a day, every day "that’s 180,000 words over a three
month span, a goodish length for a book". He is always working and that
"includes Christmas, the fourth and my birthday".
Like H G Wells he is prolific first and good
second. With 30 novels and half a dozen collected stories, various screen
plays and teleplays to his credit he has redefined the term blockbuster. In a
sense that is his appeal. He has written and lived the American Dream. While
the critics may shun him he has the reader's imagination always on his side.
Like Wells before him his stories may well outlive them all.
© Matthew Fresco October 2000
Foot and Mouth
Nationwide Release
Occasionally a new release will break out of
the confines of the review pages and make it into the big time. Foot and
Mouth is one such event. This sleeper was premiered on an obscure
Northumberland farm to an indifferent audience who at first denied having
seen it at all. But thanks to some sharp eyes vets this event has come to
national prominence. It can only be a matter of time before Hollywood takes
notice.
Hollywood has struggled to find a villain since
the collapse of the Soviet Union and while it has flirted with Iranians it is
way too scared of bombing reprisals. Luckily the English have no such defense
and have naturally assumed the role of international super villains. But what
could be more evil than a British Farmer demanding Euro money, hating townies
and hunting cuddly foxes in their spare time? With their war cry catchphrase
of 'gerr off a my land - your worryin the sheep' they are everything
Hollywood needs, resourceful, rich and shadowy. Not since Animal Farm has a
farmer been cast as the bad guy and now they are relishing the role.
Any super villain needs a cunning plan to
slaughter innocent millions. The same villains that fed cows on cow's brains
and gave us BSE have returned for a great sequel. Basically its the same plot
- evil farmers feed children's school lunches to cows and give us Foot and
Mouth. Unfortunately sequels are rarely as good as the originals. The plot
holes in this horror tale are big enough to drive a combine harvester
through. Foot and Mouth, unlike BSE, has a vaccine and is quite easily
detected. But worst of all - people can't catch it. BSE makes cows dance like
ravers on a Saturday night at Turnmills - it sends human victims into the
sort of death throws the producers of Casualty and ER have wet dreams over.
But, disappointingly, Foot and Mouth only makes cows slimmer and gives people
mild, very uncinematic, headaches.
To make up for it the director of Foot and
Mouth, Nick Brown, (who also directed the critically acclaimed Ministry of
Agriculture and Food) stages national festivals of carcass burning. Why they
don't let Damien Hirst direct these events in an Apocalypse Now style is
beyond me. But still the mass furnaces are a must see.
Success for this very British production will
not be measured by box office takings but at the supermarket shelves. To be a
true success, this feel bad event needs to emulate Babe's effect on bacon
sales. Disney got it all wrong. They really should have cast the Emperor's
New Groove with a prince turned into a cow or a sheep anything but a llama.
However, what Foot and Mouth really lacks is a
real Bruce Willis style hero figure. There is still time for the casting
call. I can see the final scenes so clearly. A bandana wearing, muscle torn
hero rises from the swamps on Dartmoor his flame thrower spewing fireball
death to doe eyed cows with the tag line 'Its Milking Time!'
Mat 'Farmer' Fresco
Seussian Studies - The Grinch
Ron Howard.
The problem with the Grinch is that it's a green,
sniveling, snot-ridden pile off pulchritudinous drivel. Apart from that I
liked it. Ron Howard is Hollywood's reliable box office magnet. He has never
made a loss or flop but then he has never made a decent picture. The best
thing he ever made was the Roger Corman funded Grand Theft Auto and the best
thing about that movie was the title. It was Corman who insisted on the title
and Corman who thought of it. On the other hand its made a bucket of money
and thrilled the kids across the world to the point that very soon the Grinch
will be as ubiquitous a Christmas movie as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the
Wizard of Oz.
Jim Carey and Ron Howard working together is a
dream ticket. Carey is a talentless gurning comedian in the moldy mold left
vacant and thought forgotten by Jerry Lewis. In his favor Carey at least
would like to make serious movies like Man on the Moon but the studios simply
do not believe he can act. For once the studios are bang on the nail. He
couldn't act his way into a walk on part in Sunset Beach.
But this is what the kids want. Even my kids.
So off we trek to Putney for a slap up feed of popcorn and a very dull and
uninspired afternoon with the Grinch. What upset me so much about this
festering pile of celluloid trash is its awkward similarity to Tim Burton's A
Nightmare Before Christmas. That Burton stole the Grinch plot may well be
true but that is no excuse for Howard to then rip off the design and pace for
his own plagiaristic version. It's the same movie all the way down to the
kiss curl mountain above Whoville (which ought to be renamed Whocaresville).
Worse than that the kids in the cinema simply
did not laugh. They were not entranced. But to be fair they were not bored.
After all, there was always the fun to be had in throwing popcorn around the
theatre. But they had the same glazed, mildly amused faces that are normally
reserved for watching Saturday morning cartoons. The best thing about the
movie is the wonderful Screenmate beautifully designed by British animation
company Indimi with help from Ron Howard himself. Its available here at
www.Tooned.com.
The problem lies with the lack of material Dr
Seuss gives a filmmaker. Theodor Seuss Geisel's genius was to bet a publisher
$50 he could write a kid's book with a vocabulary of no more than 50 words.
Seuss was responding to a 1954 Life magazine report concerning illiteracy
among school children. Perhaps Variety could run a similar article about the
state of American movies. The result was the best selling Green Eggs and Ham.
He never collected the bet but that book and the ones that followed are still
best sellers to this day.
Ron Howard uses an even smaller cinematic
vocabulary and produces a movie of green dregs and ham acting. Seuss died on 24
September 1991 and he must be spinning in memorial bank vault.
Matthew Fresco
Alex Garnet - Green Line London Jazz Festival
Royal Festival Hall
South Bank, London
10th November - 20th November
At the Royal Festival Hall the joke amongst the
Jazz musicians was that without the seemingly capital's endless Jazz
festivals they would have all become members of the dot.com digerati long
ago. The Royal Festival Hall is the jewel in the South Bank's crown. It looks
every bit a concrete monstrosity that would look more at home in the heart of
Croydon. But there it squats as if perched on the edge of a public
convenience gazing up and down its daily paper at the spectacular views up
and down the river. Perhaps that is why I feel at home here.
As it approaches its fiftieth birthday in May
2001 it worth remembering that Clough William Ellis described the building as
having its 'own graciously unaffected English self, as frankly innocent of
conscious and austere superiority as of too opulent display - an unaffected,
friendly, courteous gentlemen.' The foundation stone was laid by Clem Atlee
and this is the product of his 1945 - 51 post war Labour Administration.
Although the war was over the country had been bankrupted but it held its
head high and was socially proud. This is the real peoples' palace. Funded
largely by public subscription these days via the National Lottery it
embodies the idea of bringing art to people.
Saturday was a case in point. Saturday was a
fine day for the Royal Festival Hall. The foyer was playing host and willing
hostage to the Freestage on day two of the Green Line London Jazz Festival.
With an extraordinary day of free jazz and world music the foyer bar was
transformed into a joyous celebration. The London Jazz scene came to
celebrate. At its focus was astounding jazz sax man Alex Garnet. Not only did
he bring his band and his friends to celebrate the festival, the music and
his generosity of spirit, but he also brought his birthday party. After a
life with jazz legend Willie Garnet his mum knew how to top all. Mrs Garnet
brought cake, which quickly made its way round the delighted foyer crowd.
The heart and kernel of a concert building may
very well be the great auditorium but it is the outer parts and members of
its body that protectively encircle it as a clucking mother hen sits on its
eggs. Certainly it hatches beautiful opera and dance, theater and talks but I
enjoy the gossip that floats over its elegant restaurants and terraces.
While the foyer is stuffed to the gills with
arty music CDs and books the bar is still competitively priced. It beats
Harvey Nicks, a Philip Glass to a Donna Koran, as a place to get pissed in
the afternoon. The Peoples Palace restaurant offers unrivaled river views for
lunch or pre concert meals. Whilst you can catch the acts like Jonathan
Miller discussing the differences between art and science or Matt Johnson's
The The who played his London Shows here. It is far more enjoyable to play
vulture and circle the art tearing at scraps of everything.
The desire of any art house manager to make his
building a part of the community. He will work night and day to achieve the
dream of not a full house but a full lobby. The foyer here is jammed packed
with tourists, daytrippers and art junkies. There are people meeting after a
hard days shopping, some just looking for a moment's respite from the rain.
As Peter Hall sat in a corner and munched on cake, Alex had a jazz scene
birthday and lulled us with musical thoughts. This is a theater of space,
where ever you stand or sit or lie you feel at its center. If you want a
measure of London then don't visit the fabled Bar Italia but sit here people
watching and culture vulturing.
Matthew Jazzman Fresco
Lord Mayor's Parade
City of London
11th November 2000
A lesser reviewer would draw a parallel between
Armistice day and the Lord Mayor's Show. But the parallels are all too easy
to draw and this reviewer would not stoop so low even though this show is as
animated as the Unknown Soldier. It has all the personality of a wreath-laying
politician at the Cenotaph. It certainly deserves a state funeral though it
is doubtful many than these dull crowds would line its route to mourn its
lifeless funeral march towards a well earned grave. Worst of all the two
minutes silence felt like a colorful display of enthusiasm and mirth compared
to the real event.
The Lord Mayor of London has had a parade
through the streets of his city every year for the past 800. After that
length of time you would have thought they could have come up with something
more reassuring. But this is something only a regular reader of the Daily
Mail could truly appreciate. This is a statement of what it is to be in
England. This is meant to be the pinnacle of Empire the ultimate display of
that very English aspiration, civic pride.
Civic Pride is the gift of enlightenment to the
peoples of dark continents. This is civilization expressed as confidence not
partying in the streets and having fun but responsibility and longevity. The
floats are bedecked with corporate sponsorship even the massed taxis bringing
up the rear were emblazoned with ads for the latest dot.com. But only the
coaches expressed stately majesty. The rest was as entertaining as a
checkbook.
Bernie Grant would have been embarrassed by the
lack of pride. The lack of energy was astounding. Even when drawing past the
television cameras the partygoers could barely raise a cheer. It's not the
rain that is at fault here. I once spent carnival in a remote Brazilian
village with only a few hundred people, hell we have all been to empty
student flats in Birmingham and had more fun than this with a game of
Kerplunk and half a pack of Rizlas. Here the corporations have spared neither
expense nor imagination. It is a damp squib.
The city is empty of people who live there,
they were forced out long ago by rent increases. Only those who aspire to
make their fortunes in the banks can afford the pace. There is only one
council estate in the city and while this parade marches up west they look
east for inspiration.
All the more surprising then that the best
float on the day was not the giggling semi-naked lawyers from hip city firms,
or the giant inflatable Lighthouse but Bovis. This lease and loan firm must
be doing something right. They had their staff beating a samba beat on massed
drums with costumes and a vivacity that had the police dancing in the streets
and for a few moments lifted the crowds spirit and made them think the
journey home was justified.
There was fun to be had. Though kids will think
it a poor replacement for a game boy there is the sight and spectacle of the
horses, the gilded coaches filled with unknown dignitaries. Judges and
holders of obscure offices each lampooning their position with glove puppet
to wave at the bemused kids lining the route. The city is the star of the
show. Take a copy of the route one day and walk London's beautiful streets
from Cheapside round the Aldwych winding your way back along the Embankment.
If you love horses then this is the pageant for
you. The army uniforms never looked so quaint and romantic. If you stand
outside the back of Bank tube you can chat to the Royal Horse Guards as they
prepare to join the show. If nothing else everyone associated with this
annual event is happy to be there. For the massed military ranks it is a day
of fun. As the navy submarine float drives by it is hilarious to see the
young new recruits smiling and waving, laughing and larking as the stuffed
uniforms with stern lips and heavy medals try to convince themselves its all
worth the humiliation. For the new mayor of the City of London, David Howard
it a chance to snub his nose at the new London mayor, Ken Livingstone who
would abhor this display of ostentation.
The mayor inherits the legend of Dick
Whittington but go and look up the real story rather than the old pantomime.
The real legacy is of a rich and influential businessman who bought his fame
and the post thrice. He donated fortunes to charities and funds that still
survive today. But there is still one crowd pleaser that only money can buy.
Fireworks.
This display over the embankment eclipsed any
municipal event a few days earlier for Guy Fawkes night. A real spectacular
that had the crowds ooohing and ahhing as the sparkles and explosions lit the
sky over Waterloo Bridge and made the Thames sparkle in unison with the
windows of the IEEE and the Savoy.
There were also surprise moments of farce. The
Recycling Initiative sponsored by Sainsburys had Black Lace on their float
perpetually singing Aga Doo with the billboard legend 'Aga Doo, a hit in
1984, a hit in 1988, What do you do with your rubbish?'. Perhaps it is time
the Lord Mayor considered this question too.
The Dechronisation of Sam Magruder
G G Simpson
The Dechronisation of Sam Magruder is a rare
and unusual book and the story that surrounds its discovery and publication
is in every way as entertaining and fascinating an insight into the life and
work of its author as this short novella is itself. G G Simpson was a
brilliant biologist and prolific writer. His contribution to our
understanding of evolution was seismic and his work as a paleontologist at
Harvard is without rival. The book contains in-jokes and send ups of his
profession
His daughter discovered the book by accident in
amongst his personal papers many years after his death in 1984. It is unknown
when or even why it was written. But certainly it was never intended for
publication. It is a curious novella that contains in-jokes and insights to
the academic world of GG Simpson.
Essentially it is HG Wells' Time Machine
rewritten. The Universal Historian tells the story to the Pragmatist, the
Ethnologist and the Common Man mimicking HG Well's style and structure. But
rather than rolling time forward contrary to Einstein's Relativity Theory, G
G Simpson takes his hero back through a well argued time slip to the end of
the dinosaurs reign.
His mechanism for returning in time reopens the
debate started by the Greeks on how time moves. For Simpson it moves in short
bursts, as a series of points rather than a smooth flux. It moves like
individual movie frames. We cannot perceive where one frame ends and another
begins.
Magruder is quite marooned and left to live the
rest of his life battling dinosaurs and wondering why he is bothering to survive.
The feeling of loneliness is all pervading and we do ask ourselves why he
continues to battle through every grim day. GG Simpson was a small, strange
man. He had a determination and belief in himself that was only surpassed by
his loneliness and fear that his contribution to science would be forgotten.
The book was probably written for his own
amusement. Magruder arrives naked in his new world some 80 million years ago
and fails to recognize a dinosaur because the colors are not what he expects.
Before the end the time traveler becomes convinced that even if he returns to
his present day his first hand observations of dinosaurs will add almost
nothing to their study.
This is a rich text. On first reading there is
the captivating story but on a second look the story is rich with references
to evolutionary theory. On his second day in the Jurassic wonderland Magruder
is chased by a tyrannosaurus and then bitten by a crocodile. This gives him
time to reflect on why one species should become extinct and the other should
continue so successfully as to be unchanged to this day.
If you like time travel and science fiction
this gem of a book is a must have.
Matthew Fresco
Verdi's Nabucco
ENO, London
2000/2001 Season
David Poutney's production of Verdi's Nabucco
is a thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining opera. Poutney not only directs
but has translated this biblical thriller to English. His staging leaves
something to be desired but his attempt to bring some modern echoes to the
piece is masterful.
The show opens as if we are the congregation at
a barmitvah. A child of thirteen reads the lesson dressed in his synagogue
best. Another re-reads it in Hebrew and then the huge curtain draws back as
if a lesson from the Talmud is about to be read and a huge page is being
turned. Beneath the page the history, politics and religion come to life.
Poutney has the orchestra on stage throughout.
Dressed in the sort of fatigues that Kosovan rebels would wear they dominate
a stage made of scaffolding which represents not only construction but
destruction too. The conductor Michael Lloyd relishes the opportunity to
strut the width of the stage as if he were a rabbi officiating at the
barmitvah. We are the congregation and Lloyd is determined to direct us as
much as his orchestra and singers. This packed stage though leaves precious
little room for the players and singers who are cramped into a tiny arena.
While it adds tension it prevents movement.
This is a marvelous production full of
resonance and passion. The eponymous Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonian,
played by the masterful Bruno Caproni, is resplendent as he imitates vile
dictators in an impossibly ostentatious but dashing red military uniform. In
1845 he would have reminded Verdi's original Milanese audience of Pope Pius
IX just as he reminds us of the modern day Saddam Hussein who presides over
much of what was Babylon.
The UK has been suffering from a stifling
atmosphere of hate for all things posh. The House of Commons has just banned
fox hunting not because its cruel - the slaughter of millions of cows a day
is cruel - but because it is the preserve of the ostentatiously wealthy.
Opera has had a similar bashing. The public still sees it as a rich man's
pastime. But the ENO is the opera of the people. With tickets from as little
as £3, this production was packed to the rafters not with the bejeweled lords
of the land but with a bejeweled pink party who know high camp when they see
it. So a crowd that might have been boogying down at G-A-Y were appreciating the
rebellious beauty of opera for all at the ENO and loving every moment of it.
But this is a piece of political dissent. This
opera provides visceral excitement and passion not elitism. Opera unlike most
things in life is not over when the fat lady sings, its over when the fat
lady is dead on stage with a dagger hanging off her ample bosom. Given the
absurd days we live in where the beautiful have to try and look like famine
victims opera remains the last glimmer of hope for those that care more about
talent than waist size.
Think about it, what is more absurd? A fifty
year old Madonna in Stetson gyrating hips that just gave birth to a
preposterous circus wedding and vacuously singing 'music makes the bougouise
and a rebel' or a chorus at the ENO? You are right neither is more
preposterous. But both make for wonderful theater, only one has something to
say.
Matthew Fresco
PS2 - Is it for you?
The most striking thing about Sony's new gaming
platform, Playstation 2, is that you can not turn it off. This is not because
the games are so addictive but because there is no on/off switch. As pull it
out of its blue case you cannot but marvel at the wonder of it. Over £300 not
a decent game in sight and it's the ugliest piece of consumer electronics to
hit the market since the Styrograph.
But then everything about the Playstation 2 is
remarkable. According to Sony over 200,000 were sold prior to Christmas last
year but according to the Retailers Association fewer than 60,000 were
actually delivered to customers. Yet Sony has not suffered a backlash.
Despite an enormous marketing campaign there is no sense that the public
resent the distinctive blue eye - yet.
The must have games station is very much a
sequel with much remaining unchanged from the original Playstation which is
now a remarkable eight years old. The joypad is the same and the games are
the same. One of the big attractions is its 'backwards compatibility', an
industry awkward term that indicates all your old Playstation games will play
on the new console. In fact I found that they not only do they play but also
they seem to run faster and the loading times are quicker too. The graphics
seem sharper and the sound crisper.
The original Playstation took quite a while to
reach its recent market dominance and those awfully ambitious people at Sony
must be hoping for the same ubiquity. Playstation is home gaming personified
but Playstation 2 is going to be up against some stiff competition with Microsoft
rumored too be ramping up a half billion dollar marketing exercise to promote
its new console on the block, the X Box.
What will count with the home market is not
hardware, X-Box will reach the market later this year so it will have better
components, but games. At present the Playstation 2 has a sorry lack of
decent games and developers in the know are saying that it is a difficult
machine to write for. However, the X-Box is more similar to a PC and should
allow developers an easier time. Playstation games tended to look and feel
very similar as a result of all that Sony owned technology and Microsoft will
be hoping to take advantage of the greater development freedoms it will
afford the computer boffins who will have to write all the games.
Still if you want to impress the neighbors let
your kids play them at Tekken Tag or the hilarious Smugglers Run. But for the
time being it's a case of wait and see. Not bad for a company from the land
of the rising Sony but we think you could do better.
Matthew Fresco
Spectacular
Bodies
Hayward Galleries
South Bank London
19 October to 14 January 2001
You are going to need a strong constitution to
visit the Hayward Gallery this winter. The first exhibit is a lesson to the
makers of Scream if You Know What I Did Last Halloween 2 in how to really
scare an audience. As you walk through the innocuous brown doors that lead
into the Spectacular Bodies exhibition you are met with a warning of what is
to come. A simple tableau of butchers' knives juxtaposed with surgical
implements. The meaning has a potent effect. One is a bloody set of tools
whilst other are holy relics upon which we toast our health. It is for the
viewer to determine which.
If Marina Wallace and Martin Kemp were trying
to provoke a reaction at this exhibition they have achieved their aim. Waves
of nausea swept from tingling toes. Brows were scratched and glasses cleaned.
Not only is this powerful, emotive stuff it is also a smash hit. This is big
box office. Horror is a hit in the art world. Blood and guts sell. We are
both victim and subject and the lure is irresistible. While we may be
repulsed at the sight of a living heart beating or a dissection board of eye
balls in varying states of undress like onions on the kitchen table, we are
also drawn in with bated, open mouthed amazement at the complexity and beauty
of it all.
In the first room we are met with merely
severed heads. 17th century Dutch portraits of surgeons, and works by
Géricault, Rembrandt and Courbet are shown in an enlightening new context as
they gently invite us to consider the exhibitions theme. Respectable
gentlemen are proudly displayed with their autopsy victims. They sit
comfortably like old men on a park bench clucking at the new generation as
medical texts and life size anatomical models parade past. But there is worse
in store, wax works of decomposition, babies still in the womb are fearfully
shown in a whole room of exhibits dedicated to raping the secrets of life
from the female form. The exhibition makes no apologies nor asks for
justification. It merely compares these to a rare orchid poignantly encased
at the rooms theatrical entrance.
This is an eclectic vision taking us through
five centuries of the strange relationship between science and art. Art
introduced Science to the world. Indeed biology was observational painting
until the invention of the microscope in the 16th century. Science discovered
new friends and grew apart from faithful Art. Like many a modern romance
Science outgrew its talented lover. They divorced amicably and now science
pays alimony through powerful corporate friends.
Leonardo is here, represented by his note pad,
with a simple sketch of a tree besides a sketch of his amateur but
enthusiastic autopsy of the human nervous system. The parallels he draws
abound throughout this exhilarating exhibition. Nature is based on trees and
branches. This idea is as resonant and astounding today as when it was first
mooted by Aristotle, the father of biology. The beauty we find in nature is
within ourselves. Once that is grasped we are freed of our nausea and our
association of dead tissue with pain and suffering. Once we grasp the beauty
we overcome fear and can acquire knowledge.
Matthew Fresco
The Viceroy’s Daughters:
The Lives of the Curzon Sisters
by Ann de Courcey
Weidenfield £20
There is graffiti all over London just now. The
legend ‘1939 returning’ is appearing on walls from Kings Cross to Baron’s
Court. No one seems to know what it means. Between the wars in England is
becoming an ever more romantic sight for all of us embarking upon a new
millennium. London was a glittering place then filled with bright lights and
the fruits of success and empire. Politics was still the preserve of the
rich, which mostly meant the landed. These were aristocratic and witty days.
At its center were the three daughters of Lord Curzon the immensely powerful
Viceroy of India.
Non were more beautiful than these beautiful if
not meek inheritors of the earth. Alexandra was the prettiest. A girl of
immense charm and vivacity she and her sisters lit up the dinner parties and
the country house weekends on a lengthy social schedule. With no work to do
or ever expected these must have been party days. Servants took care of one’s
every need and money was as small an obstacle as social standing.
Alexandra married the Harry Enfield character
Fruity Metcalfe who was the Prince of Wales best friend. She was party to the
abdication in 1936 and was part of the circle with Wallis Simpson.
Cynthia was certainly talented and clever. She
married the most charismatic man of his day of his day, Oswald Mosley. Yet
these were times where tacit rules abound. The elite knew them from Eton and
Harrow and all were members of London’s club scene. The most exclusive club
of all was the House of Lords. The thirties made the sixties look a convent
school staff room. These were clubbers freed of Victorian values and the
terrors of the first world war. Mosley believed quite properly for his time
that a married woman ought to have affairs. Single girls were off limits.
Irene the eldest and most tenacious was
described by Mosley’s son recently as a dour, quiet woman. Yet this was a
rebel without applause. Although she never married, she lived the high life
enjoying affairs with the rich and powerful. She became one of our first
female life peers in 1958. After a life now seemingly at odds with her gay
social scene she was a genuine charity worker spending much of her life in
London’s East End aiding poverty. But this was a time when women received the
vote and felt they had a duty to give something in return.
Since 1890 women like Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
famous for her story The Yellow Wallpaper, had been declaring that women
could do things better. Now that they had the recognition in England they were
determined not to fail. One of the pioneers the Duchess of Athol said,
"The whole world is waiting to see what we make of it." Yet she
would have been incredulous at feminism and even opposed women’s suffrage.
Cynthia never saw Oswald’s downfall. She died
in 1933 before Mosley was disgraced and imprisoned. She worked for the Labour
Party and was an MP herself. After or perhaps before her death depending on
who’s gossip you listen too Oswald turned to his sister in law, Alexandra for
solace. While this raised eyebrows she was also enjoying affairs with
Mussolini’s ambassador to London and perhaps her fathers successor as the
Foreign Secretary. Curzon himself, the patriarch who so dominated their
sometimes spiteful lives, had had affairs himself, notably with the novelist
Elinor Glyn. In a time of brazen drunkeness he filled the mould well by
misappropriating all their cash. When Mosely died though it was the surviving
sisters Alexandria and Irene who raised the cash to maintain the family pile.
Anne de Courcey has done a fine job bringing
these extraordinary sisters to us. The book is as absorbing as the lives were
rich. When the sisters died they agreed their private diaries and letters
should become public This is a warts and all approach which leads from
glittering parties to social disintegration. We have to step through the
early days of fascism and ask ourselves how we would have acted in response
to the dramatic events that unfolded. Perhaps the graffiti is more resonant
now.
Matthew Fresco
The Turner Prize, Tate Britain 2001
The Turner prize is as notorious as it is
controversial, as successful as it is derided. The show will attract 100,0000
visitors and ten times that will see it on TV. Woody Allen once stood in
front of a voluptuous nude at the Guggenheim and declared 'I don't know much
about art but I know what I like'. He would not like the Tate. The show
itself is short and you can easily catch all that is on offer in a lunch
break. This year four artists are nominated but only Tomoko Takahashi has the
power to provoke the leader writers. She specializes in installations that
strive to create tension between chaos and order. Having lived in the gallery
space she then filled it with detritus. Entering the room we meet a seemingly
random collection of junk. Post-it notes to board games delighted my nine
year old companion. His mother was shocked and stormed out. Only hours after
a lecture on the virtues of keeping his bedroom tidy he was now considering
what to her epitomized all she hated about modern art. The crowds sped
through the room barely noticing an installation that appeared as if it could
be absorbed in a glance yet it deserves more time. After a few minutes you
start to pick out themes. With time the discord turns to tantalizing glimpses
of harmony as strange communal memories pop and fizz from the not so subtle
Images that surround you. She has created a shared experience, which is
seemingly formless but refreshing and invigorating. Channel 4's sponsorship
made Tracey Emin's soiled knickers and Damien Hirst's bisected cow world
famous. Strange then that the most popular room was as a small TVshowing
Channel 4's excellent documentaries on this years show. The visitors would
rather see the show on TV than see it in the flesh. Pity them for missing the
power of Michael Raedecker which cannot be captured on film. This
extraordinary Dutch technician blends embroidery with thick paint. His toying
with light and dull melancholic moods is technically too clever by half and
lacks emotion. But I challenge you to stand close to his painting of a grey
day and stare at the light from a listless garage and not feel the light
blinding your eyes. Wolfgang Tillmans is, by comparison, direct but seemingly
casual. His photographs have given this anti-voyeur a cult status with
magazines like Interview where his style over substance approach can make a
picture editor salivate at the chequebook. This 32-year-old German presents
us with a variety of unrelated unframed landscapes, still-lifes and abstract
Images. He appears to have taken a Polaroid to a Somerset beach and snapped
away until he exposed a whole film and slopped off back down the pub. His
nudes hide their genitalia in a manner that curiously dispels interest and
desire but nonetheless draws the eye. I cannot resist a prediction and as
gripping as Takahashi is the prize will in all likelihood go to the
commercial and accessible Glenn Brown who is a precise commentator. He
manipulates colors while mimicking the styles of Dali, and Rembrandt
consequently his work is slick but derivative. This Geordie has a confidence
that cannot be denied. The Turner prize arose from bleak Thatcherite days. In
1984 the Patrons of New Art wanted to create a revolution to drag the public
away from its obsession with Victorian values. Woody Allen will not approve.
No other show can split a dinner party between those will see Chris Ofili's
1998 paintings embellished with resin coated elephant dung as beautiful and
those who will call it as they see it as so much pachyderm shit.
'Life Work and Knowledge'
Vilma Gold Gallery
66 Rivington Street, London
13 Jan - 11 Feb 2001
As the art world shakes off the dust
accumulated over the last century idiosyncratic and uncompromising artists
like Mark Titchner are vying for their place and their right to reinterpret
and re-examine the world.
How appropriate then that Hoxton is the venue
for this surprising and welcome exhibition. The area east of Old Street tube
has grown and developed since the Blue Note left the square. Now it seems to
be teeming with drinkers and revelers where only a decade ago it was a
dangerous blight on the edge of the city. The empty warehouses and struggling
businesses are now thriving bars and exhibition spaces. You can keep
Spitalfields this is the new Covent Garden.
In this new exhibition Titchner asks us to
compare the natural genius of the unknown universe that surrounds us with the
artificial light that is our own conscienceness. Effectively he is saying
that for all our grandiose achievements we are still no more brilliant than a
60 watt light bulb attempting to light an ocean at night.
By using common materials like paper and wood,
wool and light bulbs he asserts that we 'all need something plastic to fight
the invisible'. So we have an installation that is surrounded by the words
'something' and 'nothing'. On its fringes are various near identical sources
of light, bulbs in the center of geometric patterns. These lamps illuminate
and cast shadow over a centerpiece that is a strangely organic mess of colored
and ribboned paper.
While the intention is clear, if benign the
overall impression is one of haste and insensitivity. But this is a rare
artist who is worth watching and who may well develop into a major
contributor to the way we interpret our new millennium.
But Titchner is not ungenerous and has invited
a curious and eclectic group of talented, rising artists to piggyback his new
show. With a rock theme the project space is teeming with curious gems.
The star of the minor show is undoubtedly Richard
Hogg who has copies of his very collectable book on sale as well as two new
works. This likable modern hero of art presents us with a view over Brockwell
Park strewn with album covers as if questioning the ephemeral nature of music
as disposable art.
As well as a new graffiti inspired work the
project area expands on Hogg's theme with installations, line drawings and
T-shirts, which explore and lampoon the mystery and allure of rock music.
If you are a stranger to either the Hoxton area
or the new London scene the Vilma Gold is well worth a visit. Next Saturday
put the pills back in the fridge and come and investigate the atmosphere and
credentials of a movement that Hogg and his contemporaries reinterpret and
explore so vivaciously.
Matthew Fresco
If you
have any queries or comments please mail: matt@frescom.com
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