On the Island

https://issuu.com/martinabradley/docs/on_the_island

The Blue Lotus magazine issue 54

https://issuu.com/martinabradley/docs/the_blue_lotus_magazine_54

 

Wherefor Indigo?

Simply put, The Singh Twins are the Gilbert & George for a new age. Not only in the fact that two artists work on images together, planing, working side by side, but now in the bright, colourful, full- size display sense too.

The Singh Twins and Gilbert & George have other commonalities too. Both owe their Pop allegiances to forebears like the American Andy Warhol and a colourful, in your face, Pop Art style. That is, although The Twins (Amrit Singh and Rabindra Kaur Singh) hail from Richmond, Surrey, England and Gilbert (Proesch) was born in San Martin de Tor, Italy while George (Passmore) comes from Plymouth, England.

 

Pop Art, it has been debated, began in England with Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi, and not in Pittsburg, America with Andrew Warhola (Warhol), so it is fitting, and understandable, that The Twins and Gilbert & George should champion and reinvigorate stylistic refernces to Pop Art.

Differences between the artists 'Twins' and G&G, other than chosen subject matter, are revealed in their backgrounds. While G & G's style has a stripped down Warhol style (seen in his pieces like the full-size 82 ¾ by 46 ¼ in. 'Elvis' series), with additional echoes of stained glass church windows where their sexuality is constantly on display, the Twins come to Warhol from an Indian miniature heritage, where artworks are meticulously built from multiple images to tell an overarching 'story'. The result being an enlarged 'miniature' storytelling style but, in series like 'Slaves of Fashion' reveal the inequalities and sujugations of capitalist, colonial materialism in a bright, colourful, digitally enlarged 'miniature' graphic style reminiscent of Gilbert and George.

From The Singh Twins 'Slaves of Fashion' exhibition at Colchester’s Firstsite, it was 'Indigo - Colour of India' , which tantalised me. In 2019 I had been in Bangladesh, researching and writing, and learned a little of the importance of historical 'indigo' to that country (once seen as India's Eastern Bengal), its colonial past and the lengths colonial masters had gone to quell the year long 'Indigo Revolt' in 1859, in the name of capitalist materialism. 

Indigo blue still is one of the colours of modern Bangladesh, and I had noted this while writing about Bangladesh artist Farida Zaman. It was most probably that experience which prompted me to use 'Indigo' by The Singh Twins as the cover for issue 54 of The Blue Lotus magazine.

Latest book project for Chinese Contemporary artist Luo Qi (published in Canada)

Preface

In the Talmud (and perhaps modified by the writer Anais Nin, 1961) we learn that …“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” i.e. what we see is tempered by our capacity to observe based on who and how we are. The creative individual who is the Chinese avant-garde artist Luo Qi (poet, musician and man for most, if not all, West Lake seasons), reflects the world back to itself by using what he cognises, and challengingly re-presents his cognitions back to us, his awaiting public.

It is therefore a great honour and privilege to have been, and continue to be, associated with the globally masterful Chinese avant-garde artist, Luo Qi. In this volume, my words cannot possibly do justice to the image making and textual revelations which Luo Qi brings to his creations through Chinese logographic writing (calligraphy), calligraphy-ism and asemic writing intimations, but I do try to give some gist, some essence of this maestro’s intriguing works.

Hailing from the cultural West Lake (so beloved of poets and artists) in Luo Qi’s home city of Hangzhou within China’s Zhejiang province, Luo Qi has travelled with his work to a vast array of countries, including one of the seats of Western culture, Italy, and meanwhile delving into the mediaeval age along the way, as well as bringing together copious artists in annual exhibitions concerning Asia/African & Mediterranean art and artists including those from Australia, France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Luxembourg, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Madagascar,Thailand, Singapore, Brunei et al.

Here, I am delighted for you to find a collation of my writings about Luo Qi as he and I have ‘journeyed’ together over the past few years.

Martin A Bradley, Colchester, England, May 2022.

Short film project for Indian artist Papia Ghoshal

https://fb.watch/dsfLqk8zMm/

The Kolkata born Indian artist Papia Ghoshal, spreads her copious talents sublimely across the arts. For not only is she known for her stunning paintings, drawn from the spiritually female and incorporating not only images, subtexts, signs, symbols and metaphoric elements, but bodily fluids too. I’ll come back to that.

Papia’s Baul singing and modernist Indian poetry demonstrate other talents and, as a spiritual leader, she revels in her ability to capture an audience in prayer as well as with singing, dancing and her acting talents, while engaging us all on multiple creative levels.

She is a Bohemian who has been living in Prague’s Bohemia, but also a Bohemian in spirit as are most who follow the Bengali Baul lifestyle and culture.

As a painter, Papia follows an Indian Modernist tradition of female painters from Amrita Sher-Gill onwards. Unlike Sher-Gill Papia doesn’t follow the same School of Paris figurative style, born of Gauguin that Sher-Gill followed in her imagery depicting suburban and rural India.

Instead, Papia weaves tantric abstracts which may incorporate her menstrual fluid and semen from intrigued donors. The addition of bodily fluids adds extra dimensions to her work, enabling audiences to relate to her presentations on a number of levels, Contemporary Art being but one.

The Blue Lotus magazine issue 53

 

https://issuu.com/martinabradley/docs/the_blue_lotus_magazine_53

Patterns - Francoise Issaly (published in Canada)

Patterns

“Nature’s a shrine where living columns stand

And now and then breathe a confounded phrase,

Man wanders there amid a forestland

Of symbols, followed by their intimate gaze.

As long-drawn echoes blent from far away

together into dark deep unison,

As vast as night and like the light of day,

colors, sounds and perfumes respond as one.”*

‘Correspondances’ Charles Baudelaire

Patterns are everywhere. We can see them (if we care to regard them with more attuned and consciously discerning eyes). Between us are the invisible patterns (of molecules), within us are red patterns (of corpuscles). When we close our eyes, patterns appear. The young and the innocent can often see patterns in life that adults cannot. Poets, cognisant and observing, can see patterns. Artists perceive spaces between, and can see patterns. In ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ (1857), Baudelaire speaks of ‘Correspondances’ or our interconnectedness with nature and spirituality, much in the same way that Emanuel Swedenborg (scientist, philosopher and mystic) does in his works. For much of the 20th and 21st centuries artists have pursued patterns, sidestepping ‘figurative’ or ‘object based’ art in favour of the non-representational. If we let them, patterns will launch themselves into our subconscious minds. They will seep through into our consciousness, blindsiding us with their own reality. 

According to Robert C. Barkman, Ph.D. in “See the World Through Patterns” (Psychology Today, Jan 18, 2018)

 “Pattern recognition according to IQ test designers is a key determinant of a person’s potential to think logically, verbally, numerically, and spatially. Compared to all mental abilities, pattern recognition is said to have the highest correlation with the so-called general intelligence factor.” 

In retrospect, we observe patterns in our lives. When young Françoise Issaly fantasised about going to Canada, and of living in China. She achieved both. She is tenacious. A person of capabilities, and of a strong mind. Was it due to destiny, fate, kismet or things that are determined such as ‘Karma’ (Kamma in Pali), of cosmic ‘action’ (and ‘reaction’) which ‘The Story of Buddhism A Concise Guide to Its History and Teachings by Donald S. Lopez Jr.’ explains as “..the law of the cause and effect of actions, according to which virtuous actions create pleasure in the future and non virtuous actions cre­ate pain”.

We could imagine spiritual or cosmic patterns stretching from China into Françoise’s childhood. There was a large Chinese stone at her French grandmother’s house, in which the budding artist, as a small child, would play. There was also, back in France, her mother’s carved Chinese horse ‘chinoiserie’ statuette, the style of which Françoise instantly recognised on a later trip to Xitang, China. As a woman, as a Mahayana Buddhist and as an artist whose production is revealed as being poesy, Françoise recognises the above as indicators to the path which had chosen her, leading her to teach and create art in China.

As a child growing through to adulthood, like the Chinese musical instrument the ‘erhu’ Françoise always had two strings to pluck, those of science and of art. She studied maths, biology, optics and physics, yet still continued with her art endeavours. Finally, it became make-your-mind-up time. She had to choose one path or another, science or art. Françoise chose art. Though, in reality, she melded them rather than opted for one or the other, and continues to use her knowledge of science within her art production, just as many artists like Berthe Morisot and the French Impressionists, as well as Marie Laurencin, and her inquiries using echoes from ‘Cubism’ in the Section d'Or ("Golden Section") group (active between 1912 and 1914), have done before her. 

Over two decades Françoise has developed as a rational, painstakingly methodical artist. Who like Émile Gaboriau’s methodical, scientifically minded detective Monsieur Lecoq, investigates her art. As a traditional European art training suggests, Françoise begins with drawing as her visual thinking. Before the naming, before the colouration of her patterns comes the carefully investigated drawing process. She approaches her mark making as a scientist would, investigating, probing, scrutinising. She reveals the nuances in her thought and thoughtful processes with a studious intensity in her pattern making interactions; a mindful connection between her, her materials and inner spirituality eventually manifests the practically intangible, tangible.

André Breton de facto leader of the ‘Surrealist’ movement, believed that modern man had become too blaise, too familiar with everyday objects and things in his world, blaise enough to render him blind to what is there. ‘Surréalité’ is a reminder of the unseen, of the forgotten. Méret Oppenheim’s ‘Le Déjeuner en fourrure’ (‘The Luncheon in Fur’ 1936), is a cup, saucer and spoon covered in, ironically, the fur of a Chinese gazelle. Fur renders those objects useless for their purpose which, in turn, helps us reflect upon that purpose. Françoise Issaly, by focussing upon the space between objects in her abstraction, is similarly revelationary. 

‘Cadeau’ (The Gift, 1921) by Man Ray is a similar reminder. It is an iron having nails protruding from what is usually a smooth, flat surface suitable for ironing. This gift cannot fulfil its purpose as an iron, just as Oppenheim’s cup etc is unsuitable for its supposed purpose. We therefore reflect on the object’s purpose, just as we do when confronted by René Magritte’s ‘La Trahison des images’  (‘The Treachery of Images’, or ‘this is not a pipe’, 1929). The unseen becomes seen. Surrealism, or the notion of ‘Surréalité’, grew to encompass various forms of a more organic (or biomorphic) abstractions, as witnessed in the works of Joan Miró (such as ‘Carnaval de Arlequín’, or the ‘Carnival of Harlequins’,1925) or, looking further afield, the abstract works of the (non-Surrealist theorist artist) Wassily Kandinsky and his ‘Circles in a Circle’ (1923) and “Composition II’ (1910), or in the works of Jean (Hans) Arp. The ‘Modernist’ move was towards abstraction, with artists experimenting with non-object based imagery from which has grown offshoots such as those revealed in organic art, or ‘Biomorphism’.

Wassily Kandinsky (in ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’, ‘Über das Geistige in der Kunst’, 1910) remarks that “The spiritual accord of the organic with the abstract element may strengthen the appeal of the latter (as much by contrast as by similarity) ...” His ‘Squares with Concentric Circles’ (1913) is a testimony to this and the power of patterns.

We may step back and observe Françoise Issaly’s canon to date, remarking upon the vigorous 30 day challenge of her watercolour 'Meditation Series’ (2013), her series of ‘Manifolds’ (like ‘Manifold XI’, 2013, three dimensional manifestation of her patterning with Pollack-like webs such as bringing to mind ‘String Theory’, and Matisse-like cut outs such as ‘Conjoncture I’, 2014 and paper installations which bring her patterning to life, and a host of other three dimensional representations of patterns). We may marvel at Françoise’s intriguing ‘Plis & Formes’ series (2018) (acrylic-on-canvas) where shapes which are distinctly ‘biomorphic’ tantalise and present fresh pictorial stratagems, to her (also acrylic-on- canvas) 2020 ‘Clouds’ series, inspired by biomorphic minutiae gleaned from Buddhist Thangka imagery, the diligent observer might witness a distinct gliding towards a fresh spiritual theses within the artist’s patterning. 

Like Kandinsky, Françoise imbues her artworks with spirituality in form, shape and colour. Occasionally in name too, though the precise naming of her work has only begun later in her working life. In the marks she makes, the models she constructs and the hangings which grace halls and galleries, she draws essences from her love of China, her visits there, her understanding of Mahayana Buddhism and of various symbologies associated with differing sectors of Buddhist iconography (such as ‘Thangka’, Tibetan Buddhist scroll painting). Works such as Françoise Issaly’s ‘Clouds’ series, are conscious patterns observed from ‘Thangka’ iconography. This, as mentioned, is a conscious, rather than a subconscious process, and part and parcel of her ‘scientific’ approach (again similar to Kandinsky) to her work. 

In Tibetan imagery, swirling, graceful clouds (we are told), represent ‘Mahamudra’ (or the union of compassion and wisdom, the ultimate realisation of our true nature as mentioned in the Buddhist ‘Heart Sutra’). Other interpretations speak of the ‘Buddha Mind’; clouds eternally passing but the sky (mind) remaining unchanged. It is fitting that this scientific, and yet spiritual, artist chooses to bring to the fore those elements in the ‘Thangkas’ which grace the background to the Buddha and deities. Françoise’s focussing down on those clouds, painstakingly drawing, then painting those forms, like with her painting ‘c'est ici que l'on retrouve le mythe II’ (2020) and before that ‘In the Clouds I’ (2018) are enclosed within a sacred or perfect circle of completeness (a ‘Mandala’, essence/container) which brings us (her audience) closer to personal revelation. Kandinsky mentions 

“In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material...Consciously or unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material, setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements....” 

Françoise Issaly’s patterns, and pattern making, is organic, redolent of biomorphism, and a byproduct of a keen analytical mind and skilled draughts person. Kandinsky had pointed out that it takes a greater skill to render abstraction than it does mimesis. Keener mental, analytical processes come into play when tackling abstraction, which is something demonstrated by Françoise over the past two decades of work. 

*La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers

Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;

L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles

Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent

Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,

Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,

Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.