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Featuring tosh uttered by the recently-ennobled This man was last seen with his head five miles up the orifice where the sun don’t shine and was still going strong against a head wind. Yes, you guessed, it’s ‘Sir’ Anthony Gormless. ‘Sir’ is what he’s hoping for and what Radio 4’s Today programme already believe him to be. Perhaps they know something we don’t. Anyway, as we all know, never was such a meagre talent spread so thinly over so enormous an ego. And never was such conspicuous visibility so undeserved. His recent performance on the Channel 4 News was remarkable for communicating not a single word of sense. Gormless hexes people: intelligent TV producers will run a clip of Gormless talking bollocks as though his utterances are coruscating aperçus worthy of Ruskin. His latest project is to bring his metal rod idea from the Australian outback to Gateshead. So here he is waffling his way to a thoroughly undeserved K: “It’s amazing to see the diversity of individuals, the feeling that each one is physically unique.” You should be a philosopher, you blue-rinsed twerp. But hang on ... here he comes again browbeating some dozy hack from the Independent: “Sculpture is the place in which the ephemeral and lucid nature of human experience can be inscribed in geological terms. Everything is mobile and everything is an image... My appearance belongs to others not to me. It is an example of the universal condition of embodiment.” But hang on ... here he is again in another newspaper, turbo-charger screaming on his bollocks engine: “I’m very aware that everyone is on a journey, trying to make shape out of what we’ve been given: body, mind, energy. It’s very similar to the sculptural process. Everybody at various times feels more or less in control of what the shape of their lives may be, and art can have a very catalytic effect on that process. We ignore it at our peril.” Unfortunately, there’s no way we’ll ever be allowed to ignore you Gormless, you arrogant, pretentious, brainless, self-important, talentless arsehole. But hang on ... there’s more. This bloke thrives on abuse. We have to face facts: for some bollocks is only part-time. It’s a state of mind they think themselves into when they need to talk and write about art. For a small number, however, it goes further, it is an irreplaceable constituent of their consciousness and consumes them full time. Such people don’t just live bollocks, they are bollocks, and Gormless is the Commandant of this company. “My sculpture and drawings act like the blood from the neck of a decapitated chicken in a voodoo rite might act – as a zone of projection for all sorts of hopes and fears. You try to empathise with what’s going on and then influence it in some way. And in broad terms the most recent drawings are about the same issues as the sculptures. Where does something begin and end? Is it a product of its context, or does it influence its environment? I don’t think there’s an end to that dichotomy. Everyone is on a journey, trying to make shape of what we’ve been given: body, mind, energy.” Now where have we read that familiar-sounding bollocks before? One of our greatest living artists, Cornelia Fluff, has wrapped up Rodin’s The Kiss with a mile of string (notice the subversively significant reference to imperial as opposed to metric measurement – Fluff is a well-known Eurosceptic). It is not in the least arrogant of this marvellous conceptualist to use another artist’s work for her own purposes, and those who heard her recent contribution to Desert Island Discs will realise immediately that we are dealing here with a remarkable intellect born of profound knowledge and learning whose only motivation is the furtherance of art. Here she goes: “When The Kiss was first shown in Lewes it was considered pornographic. It had to be draped. But now it has become so familiar we can scarcely see it. The string is a measure of distance. It is a measure of the emotional distance between the lovers, a sign that they have been locked in this embrace for all eternity. The string is tightest round the lovers’ lips because it is in the kiss that there is more tension. But the binding starts to relax as they become more informal, gradually unravelling as it falls around their bodies. The mile-long piece of string is a measure of distance. Here it is about emotional distance. It is about going the distance. They are locked in the kiss for eternity. But that which ties them together also suffocates them. A kiss is a thing that has strings attached. The string is about entanglement as much as the lyrical side of love. But it is also typical of my own work. A lot of my pieces are to do with suspension. I once drew a dollar out into a length of wire the height of the Statue of Liberty. The string is so banal, I thought I would take away the romanticism of the piece. But actually it adds to it. It makes it more poignant.” Send for the ambulance... The art critic of the Times observed: “The wrapping accentuates the statue. It evokes convoluted emotions and meaning.” Absolutely. Every loop of string adds another convolution. The same critic continues with a classic deployment of the Borlandbollocks Option, always the resort of desperately desperate sincerity: “Parker’s work is characterised by ambivalent meanings. She is concerned with opposites, with things rising and falling, disintegrating and coming back together again.” Come back Corkballs... A mile of string is also, crucially, 10,560 times the length of the average adult penis. And the significance of the number 10,560 will be obvious to everyone. On the other hand the Tate’s Chief Snake Oil Salesman was in expansive mode: “It makes you think about how their heads are bound together and the claustrophobia of relationships, what it’s like to be bound to someone else. It also raises awareness of the historical context. When The Kiss was first seen in Britain it was viewed as obscene. Now it is not thought to be quite so contentious, but the string highlights that moment of erotic poignancy. The combination of the different materials is also interesting. Marble we associate with high culture and string, low culture.” Rodin, contacted by Gypsy Rose Lee, raged: “Eh bien je jamais, I’m veritablement miffed zat zis Fluff fam can swing on my cock without asking permission en avance. What would Monsieur Flasher say si quelqu’un strung up his requin? We would never entendre ze dernière of it, n’est-ce pas?” From: The Jackdaw No. 27 April 2003 | |||||
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