Mark Rothko Exhibition

More than a quarter of the way through its showing and Mark Rothko’s exhibition is still brimming with people. Within the main room, businessmen sit dreaming away their lunch hours, an old lady quietly muses in the shaded gallery space and a collection of lovers relax languidly arm in arm, lost in the colossal canvases before them.

Hung from all four walls just above eye level, the paintings bear down upon viewers so that one feels surrounded by them in a protective circle, somehow safe and free from harm. This shielding effect is heightened by the dim lighting of the room, resembling a church’s sheltering interior and one cannot help but to feel touched by an element of the spiritual.

There is little movement; people stand as still as his paintings, taken aback, overwhelmed even, and amidst the room’s silence and all-encompassing stativity, one can still hear muffled whispers of constant discussion. From atmosphere alone therefore, it becomes clear that Rothko’s works, are not to be, and simply cannot be, passed by.

His ephemeral landscapes of oranges, reds and maroons are made up of cloudy outlines; forms devoid of concise linearity yet resembling the smudged imprint of squares and rectangles. His paint, built up layer upon layer creating an illusion of depth, is akin to the colours and fluidity of molten lava, and as one spends time with these fascinating works, more subtle shades, hazy nuances and hints of ghostly forms gently emerge from the canvas.

It is only a matter of time for instance before one begins to see small patches of white reflecting off the low light, as if Rothko were demure enough to reduce his signature to the marks of his own fingerprints. His works are warm and welcoming; appealing in their simplicity, as if each brush stoke were somehow laced with understanding and compassion.

As one enters the final exhibition room, the Rothko, previously so easy to establish a rapport with was now not so welcoming. Hung just at eye level, blacks and greys replace those warming and familiar oranges and reds, cutting the canvases definitively in two. A white surround borders the works, reducing the pictorial space into a flatter plain. There is an uncertainty here too, yet this time it is more frightening, more foreboding. What strikes me however is that the room is still full of awe-struck observers, still unable to draw themselves away.

While so much contemporary art confuses and intimidates, Rothko’s resolves and relaxes, gently tapping into our sub-conscious and sitting there, slowly mending any abrasions it might find. There are no plaques telling us what to think, nor even any obvious or tangible subject matter; and how refreshing that is, to feel that art doesn’t have to be complicated.

In a world where endless questions are left unanswered, Rothko’s works uncannily produce solutions and in their presence, one feels free from the stresses of modern life. If I were to meet Rothko, I would expect him to be very much like his works; subtle, at times a little inward, yet with a helplessly mammoth presence.

Meeting a Journalist

Our conversation clunked on the brakes and took a sharp turn downhill after I asked him about his career. “I’ve got my own column in the Guardian sweety; I’m a media celebrity” he gloated, sweeping his thinning hair from his face and gulping down his wine; the toxic fuel that furthered his irritatingly incessant bragging. I met Liam one lethargic summer evening when colloquialism and Coronas cuddle you into a warm embrace; in fact on this particular night I felt like those arms could cradle me forever.

A friend of a friend, Liam was a confident guy, a cool yet casual centre of attention, and from a distance seemed no different to the rest of the artsy crowd who, like the half-finished bottles of beer, appeared to spill out on to the warmed pavement.

As soon as we were introduced, Liam spoke at me for most of the evening- the subject- his enviable career in journalism. His words and sentences darted out at me from all angles, propelled so sharply by his yellowed tongue that they would catapult their way into my ear canals causing my brain to swell with an overload of sickening syntax.

This ‘encounter’ as I like to describe it, was so one sided that my communication limited itself to a selection of infrequent nods or the occasional raising of both eyebrows, which of course gave Liam the idea that I was thoroughly impressed with every thing he had to say. I couldn’t work out if the former was happening due to aforementioned brain damage or because I’d somehow persuaded myself that life was no longer worth living and therefore dialogue was subsequently a futile activity.

Liam’s movements were exaggerated; every word was accompanied by some new gesture whether it be the stamping of his pointed shoe or the backward rotation of his spindly wrist that seemed to suffer from the weight of his watch. These manoeuvres were so overt and stupidly energetic that at times he was in danger of knocking the Chardonnay out of his own hand and shattering the glass all over the floor. I have to admit, I did find myself wishing he would, so like a crafty crab I could scurry off sideways into a darkened backstreet- only after having pinced out his tongue.

Trying to ignore the rather alarming pain in my head and Liam’s smuggish snarl I couldn’t help but feel drawn to him and I stood, rooted to the pavement, despite all efforts to indeed shift sideways. Perhaps it was the unkempt complexion that gave him away; it certainly lacked the pizzazz of his so called ‘glamorous’ lifestyle or maybe it was his pale skin, that despite his 5 star stay in St Tropez this week, clearly hadn’t seen the sun for years.

With this exciting evidence I began to realise this neurotic nincompoop was flawed, nervous- edgy-even. Beads of sweat crept tentatively onto his oily brow and as he interrupted his own conversation to accost various friends, I watched, as they clutched onto their drink for dear life whilst continuing to dash in the opposite direction.

For the first time that night, a smile crept up on my face. I was revelling, revelling in the idea that Liam wasn’t perfect; he was fraying at the edges, ironically more like the pages of a newspaper than it’s successful columnist.

As I placed my hands upon my cheeks to stop my grin from expanding to my hairline I wondered which one of us was in the wrong. Was it me, the jealous intern, desperate to spot imperfections in industry rivals, or was it Liam; the big ol’ faker? Either way I certainly pitied him, and not just for that thinning hair.

When last orders were over, my friends and I headed back to my car, pausing on the hearing of staggered footsteps and a light pitter patter. We turned around, and there was Liam, swaying himself toward the bus stop his stash of business cards following him as they floated into the gutter.

Richard Long

As if a breath of fresh air and with an almost succulent simplicity, Richard Long once stated, “My works are about lines and stones and walking”. With nothing in hand save a camera and compass, Long treads his way through expansive landscape recording his artistic journeys upon the biggest canvas known to man. As he roams earthy terrains from Scotland to Bolivia, each walk inspires an idea for Long, making his explorations his very unique art.

A sense of neurosis surrounds this lone wonderer as he paces the same line repeatedly, drops stones at intervals or re-arranges rocks into circles and spirals. He acts without pretence or plan; often unaware of what will be created until he finds a section of wilderness that inspires him.

His sculptures are documented by a few photographs, after which he then packs up his tripod and unaffectedly moves on, leaving his works without frame or signature. It is exactly this evocative vulnerability that make Long’s works so resonant, for without the protection of strong gallery walls, they are left abandoned, soon to be washed away like messages of love paved in sand or one’s first footsteps in the crispest snow.

Impermanence, however, has been said to leave Long unphased, in fact, fascinated, as his very mission is to capture the unending cycles of life. His fixation with time is thus apparent; just as the rain melts away his sculptures, the marks we make upon the world are equally trodden upon or forgotten. In his words “everything that moves leaves a trace of passing-it leaves a line” and one can only assume that Long wishes us to view nature’s symmetry as an amalgamation of journeys past and present.

Unlike a number of artists today, Long delights in the idea that his pieces might not even be recognised as art as he admits “If I were well-known I couldn’t do my work”. A far cry from the expanding egos of the art world, Long revels in the anonymity nature kindly provides and one can only guess that he prefers to work undisturbed; man against nature, one vertical against an expanse of horizontal.

I’m not lucky enough to have met Richard Long but something tells me that it would be hard to track him down. Like a gust of wind he would slip right past me; the only traces of his existence perhaps a few crumbs on a napkin, and one set of very muddy footprints.

Luckily not all of Long’s works have escaped unnoticed. On 3rd June-6th September the Tate Britain will hold Richard Long’s first major retrospective exhibition for eighteen years in which four decades worth of sculptures, large-scale wall works, photographs, writing, maps and books will be put on display; so grab those hiking boots and get moving.

Train-Trash

As I nuzzle into my window seat on the train home from a strenuously dreary day, I notice a wrinkled newspaper quietly perched beside me on the adjacent seat, its bold black font desperately staring up at me. Looking around for any claimers, I pick it up, and allow myself to browse through, taking my time so that it lasts the entire 20-minute stint back.

As I flick however, what stands out are not the endless articles that pass by my tired eyes in a haze of merged print, but the subtle signatures of human life tattooed upon its pages; the crossword, for example, has been partially completed in faded pencil and a brief scribble of an email address animates one crinkled corner. Another page has been brutally ripped in two- a smudgy fingerprint the only trace of the perpetrator- and on another, a joker has doodled all over the face of Gordon Brown.

My interest in the headlines starts to dwindle and I become lost in daydream wondering who else has picked up this very newspaper on this same dreary day. Perhaps it was the man of my dreams on his morning commute, gripping the pages momentarily with his tanned weathered hands as he briefly scans, before casually discarding it at Waterloo. Or perchance it was a lonesome fellow; one who attends to every line on every single page in hope that he might find something that inspires him.

Whoever it may have been, and however anonymous they may have felt, a little piece of someone’s existence has been captured. On our journeys to and fro, it strikes me that we will always, whether unknowingly or not, leave an imprint and on what better object than a newspaper; just think, your own little trace of existence can lie in something as simple as yet another crease on its front page, or one more number in it’s Soduku box.

In my eyes, newspapers do not document the news at all, rather, like secret love notes they reach out to, and bring together, hundreds of Londoner’s who all seem to live in fear of direct communication with one another. As you next come across a paper, either nudged between your seat, or flung in disarray over the floor, take a moment to think about how many others you are connecting with through your very finger tips, and, as you abandon it upon your seat, please, do leave it neatly.