AWOL Friday: tired horses at the ICA
'I would like, if I could, to bring into this, somewhere the unfashionable notion of "Beauty," which I find compelling and immediate, however theoretically inadequate. I mean this in the simplest way - that if I was asked, "Why do you like concrete poetry?" I could truthfully answer "Because it is beautifl"'. Thus Ian Hamilton Finlay in a letter collected in Roland magazine, available at the Poor. Old. Tired. Horse exhibition of visual poetry (or text-based art should that be?). Finlay's work - aesthetic and clever too - is the best here, especially of the earlier concrete poets of the twentieth century. Lots of interest elsewhere here, but more of a conceptual, intellectual sort of interest. Liliane Lijn's spinning cones for example, or Christopher Knowles 'typings' - the latter also interesting in that Knowles has a type of autism which combines and perhaps intensifies his mathematical bent.
But I felt the way I often feel about conceptual art. That it is a borne of good ideas, intriguing, playful, almost joke-like displays and send-ups of human cliches and foibles, but it doesn't always impress with its skill or craft, or really raise itself up above the level of an embodied witticism. A lot of the pieces here, or elsewhere when I'm exposed to conceptual art (like those clothes hanging overhead in the pinakothek de Moderne in Munich) make me think they should have remained as concepts actually - a narrative presentation of them would have been enough and would have provoked the same level of reflection. A character in a novel could have worked away at the spinning cones or the hanging clothes and the readers would have had equal chance to reflect on their meaning or implications, without having to go to a gallery to do it. I still remember for example a novel-character who did a performance piece involving painting themselves in gold and swinging from a trapeeze. I can't remember the rest of the novel, read long ago, but I remember that, perhaps more clearly than if I'd seen it as an exhibit. That sort of thing.
Lilian Lijn aside I couldn't help noticing that the majority of earlier concrete poets were men. One would have to have a certain confidence to present such pieces as art, I thought. Perhaps it helped to be a man. Good to see plenty of contemporary concrete poets/ text artists are women though. I would have included some photos but photography was forbidden. I asked a gallery sitter if I could take some - but No. 'It's surprising how many people don't bother to ask, they just go ahead and shoot.' I had too little confidence and too many manners I'm afraid, so no visual aids to an eminently visual exhibition.
I did find it interesting that one of the main founders of the Concrete Poetry movement in Britain was a Benedictine monk - Dom Sylvester Houedard. 'He saw Concrete Poetry as an extension of an ancient tradition of shaped verse, and his works are allied to notions of mystical contemplation. His interest in mysticism also encouraged him to explore Buddhism and Hinduism, and some of his works echo the mystic-psychedelic imagery of the hippy era,' says Roland. Sounds a cool kind of monk. Text as an extension of the religious icon, perhaps, gaining extra spiritual resonance beyond the merely semantic. Yes, I like the concept of that.
But I felt the way I often feel about conceptual art. That it is a borne of good ideas, intriguing, playful, almost joke-like displays and send-ups of human cliches and foibles, but it doesn't always impress with its skill or craft, or really raise itself up above the level of an embodied witticism. A lot of the pieces here, or elsewhere when I'm exposed to conceptual art (like those clothes hanging overhead in the pinakothek de Moderne in Munich) make me think they should have remained as concepts actually - a narrative presentation of them would have been enough and would have provoked the same level of reflection. A character in a novel could have worked away at the spinning cones or the hanging clothes and the readers would have had equal chance to reflect on their meaning or implications, without having to go to a gallery to do it. I still remember for example a novel-character who did a performance piece involving painting themselves in gold and swinging from a trapeeze. I can't remember the rest of the novel, read long ago, but I remember that, perhaps more clearly than if I'd seen it as an exhibit. That sort of thing.
Lilian Lijn aside I couldn't help noticing that the majority of earlier concrete poets were men. One would have to have a certain confidence to present such pieces as art, I thought. Perhaps it helped to be a man. Good to see plenty of contemporary concrete poets/ text artists are women though. I would have included some photos but photography was forbidden. I asked a gallery sitter if I could take some - but No. 'It's surprising how many people don't bother to ask, they just go ahead and shoot.' I had too little confidence and too many manners I'm afraid, so no visual aids to an eminently visual exhibition.
I did find it interesting that one of the main founders of the Concrete Poetry movement in Britain was a Benedictine monk - Dom Sylvester Houedard. 'He saw Concrete Poetry as an extension of an ancient tradition of shaped verse, and his works are allied to notions of mystical contemplation. His interest in mysticism also encouraged him to explore Buddhism and Hinduism, and some of his works echo the mystic-psychedelic imagery of the hippy era,' says Roland. Sounds a cool kind of monk. Text as an extension of the religious icon, perhaps, gaining extra spiritual resonance beyond the merely semantic. Yes, I like the concept of that.
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