Art & Criticism – Wis[s]e Words

All I wanna play is Talk Talk

Published on November 8, 2024Leave a comment

It’s been a grey, cold day today and I’ve been listening to Talk Talk, all five their albums in chronological order. Talk Talk always feels autumnal to me so this was the perfect day to put them on.

The five studio albums from left to right: The Party's Over (1982), It's My Life (1984), The Colour of Spring (1986), Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991)

Now critics always go on about how different each Talk Talk album is from the next, especially the last two from the first three. And indeed, when you listen to Laughing Stock (1982)after The Party’s Over (1991), they don’t sound as if they’re made by the same band. But when you listen to them in order, you can see an evolutionary line in there, one album following logically from the previous.

The Party’s Over is very of its time, big flat drums and lots and lots of synths, but it already contains the seeds for the next two albums, It’s My Life (1984) and The Colour of Spring (1986). These two keep the big, open sound of that debut but dial back on those drums and synths. Spirit of Eden (1988) meanwhile is much more withdrawn and quiet, but its A-side follows logically from The Colour of Spring‘s B-side which already started quieting down.

If you only know the big radio hits and then stumble across those last two albums I can understand why they sound so out of left field, but in context they build up logically from those very first beginnings. Listening to them I really couldn’t tell where The Colour of Spring ended and Spirit of Eden began.

In conclusion: Mark Hollis was a genius and Talk Talk one of the best bands from the eighties.

Seeing far beyond his time — John Berger’s Way of Seeing (1972)

Published on July 23, 2024Leave a comment

If you have two hours to spare, spend them watching Ways of Seeing, a four part documentary by John Berger from 1972, ostensibly on how photography has changed the way in which we see art, but moving beyond that to examining the European tradition of oil painting, what its purpose was and how it’s reflected in modern day publicity.

For something itself now fiftytwo years old, from a time when colour television was still a novelty and no such thing as personal computers let alone mobile phones and social media existed, it’s still incredibly relevant. Just that first episode alone, looking at how a painting was changed from a still, silent image rooted to one unique location to something that can be chopped up, moved about, re-contextualised through the ability to photograph and reproduce it, is a revelation. Then in the second episode he takes a punt at how nudes, female nudes, are represented in oil painting: how these are not naked, truthful images of the women they supposedly portray but passive pictures to be consumed by the male owner of the painting. The female figure as a possession to be displayed. And then, echoing what he said in the first episode, that he too uses these painting to send his own messages, he acknowledges the absurdity of his the sole voice on the subject and hands over to a round table of women to discuss this further.

Episode three than looks at the real purpose of the oil painting as a medium, not the lofty ideals ascribed to it, and argues that it is about showing off your possessions as the owner/displayer. That in turn leads to the fourth episode where it juxtapositions publicity and advertisements with the oil painting tradition as a sort of mirror image. If paintings shows the things you already own and you in control of them, ads feed the dream of owning them, the aspiration.

A very heady mix of ideas here and no wonder it had such an impact. It is an interesting rebuttal to the far more traditional view of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969), to which this was in response. Art as a mystical, uplifting activity versus art as a capitalist tool that needs democratisation as much as any other such tool. In this context, the most interesting idea of all may have come from the end of the first episode, after he has argued that images are like words, but:

The images may be like words but there is no dialogue yet. You cannot reply to me. FOR THAT TO BECOME POSSIBLE IN THE MODERN MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION ACCESS TO TELEVISION MUST BE EXTENDED BEYOND IT’S PRESENT NARROW LIMITS.

Fifty years on we got this through social media; now we know that this democratizing dialogue has broken our modern elites’ minds.

“Our collaboration wasn’t a matter of compromise so much as collision”

Published on October 11, 2023Leave a comment

Bill Watterson and John Kascht talk about their working process on The Mysteries, a genuine collaborative process in which nothing was planned and each decision was taken unanimously: “we didn’t know what we wanted but we knew what we didn’t want once we saw it“.

Nothing better than hearing two passionate people talking about how they worked together and managed to create something despite of or maybe because of the huge differences in their prefered way of working.

If only you had a friend like Andrew Ridgeley

Published on July 11, 2023Leave a comment

I watched the Netflix Wham! documentary on Sunday mainly because Mic Wright tweeted about it a few days ago:

The Wham! documentary on Netflix is one of the most beautiful things ever. And as we are having a discourse about men not talking about their feelings or being supportive: Andrew Ridgeley is a perfect example of someone who loved and supported their friend no matter what.

I was young enough in 1982-1986 to not be prejudiced against Wham!; they were just part of the pop landscape I grew up with. So I never had the disdain for their music that the eighties music press seemed to have. However, I did buy into the myths pushed by them: that George Michael was the one with all the talent in Wham and Andrew was just a hanger-on who got lucky. As the documentary makes crystal clear this was completely wrong. It was in fact Andrew who was the handsome one, the song writer, the stylist when Wham began. George lacked his confidence and wasn’t as skilled yet as he was. It was because Andrew was there as an example, as a friend, that George could grew into the superstar and artist he was when Wham ended.

Andrew was the booster rocket to George’s shuttle into star orbit. He lifted him up higher than he could’ve flown on his own, then dropped back to Earth once his job was done. It’s amazing how much he supported George, to the point of ending his own stardom for him. And not only that; he also shielded him from the gutter press. His fuckboi behaviour drew the attention of the tabloids which meant they never found out about George being gay. And being outed as gay in the eighties meant the end of your career. Not to mention continuous harassment from the press.

So cheers Andrew Ridgeley. If only we all had friends like you.

Slapstick is not abuse

Published on March 21, 2023Leave a comment

In a post on whether Bocchi the Rock is mean to Bocchi, Bless hits on something that I’ve been struggling with recently, when people, critics especially, conflate comedic violence with actual abuse:

In a way, it’s the same sort of thing as a tsundere girl punching out her dense love interest. I’ve always been a little baffled by people who claim this kind of cartoonishly exaggerated expression of character promotes abuse in romantic relationships. While I understand people being uncomfortable with it (just as I can understand someone being uncomfortable with Bocchi’s portrayal of social anxiety), I don’t think it makes interpretive sense to treat these kinds of abstractions as the show’s reality. When Chitoge winds up a ball of fire to punch Raku in Nisekoi, that’s obviously not meant to be taken as literally happening. The same effect happens, just to a lesser degree, with a less fantastical punch.

It’s not that you can’t feel uncomfortable watching this or that you cannot disagree with its presence in a show, it’s more that it sometimes feels as if critics believe it is actual abuse happening to the characters rather than a humourous device? Anime Feminist especially has a bad habit of doing this, treating slapstick as abuse like in the comment thread here to the point where it routinely down rates otherwise outstanding, feminist friendly shows in favour of bland nothing burgers. As if inoffensive is more important than being good. With anything even remotely queer being judged that much more harshly. Girls Love shows especially are a victim of this. I like the site, I like its purpose, but this drives me nuts. I wish they would be a bit more charitable.