{"id":1727,"date":"2018-02-02T12:36:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T12:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1727"},"modified":"2021-01-27T17:13:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T17:13:18","slug":"dick-french-on-the-town-september-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1727","title":{"rendered":"Dick French: On The Town – September 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a room in my flat that I rather grandly refer to as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Library\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. About 20 years ago I had it fitted out with shelves up to the ceiling with nicely boxed-in corners. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s painted deep red. For a few years it looked splendid, then it gradually started filling up with junk. Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s waist-deep in motorcycle parts, leather trousers, helmets, exhaust pipes and tins of oil. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been trying to excavate it recently as my son has gone off to work in New York, and now the whole flat resembles a junk yard. The book I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to find is the collected writings of Sir Thomas Lawrence. So far I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had no luck. I remember it was dark green with faded gold lettering and quite thick. The reason I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m keen to find it is the exhibition Painters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Paintings at the National Gallery. The great treat of this show is a preparatory drawing by Carracci for The Loves of the Gods, A Woman Being Carried Off by a Sea Monster, which used to belong to Lawrence. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a fantastic piece that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure he must have written about it at some length. What condition was it in before he bought it? Was it rolled up or crumpled? Where did he get it from? How much did he pay for it?<\/p>\n

When I find the book I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to be like Lieutenant Columbo when he started to whistle \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThis old man…\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, but until then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just consider the exhibition, which is interesting but puzzling.<\/p>\n

How could such a great draughtsman as Degas have lived with C\u00c3\u00a9zanne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cack-handed Bather with Outstretched Arms? The universal veneration offered up to C\u00c3\u00a9zanne has always been a mystery to me. He did some lovely still lives, but get him away from the fruit and veg and the wonky bottle and jug and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just dreadful. Matisse owned a horrible small C\u00c3\u00a9zanne of three bathers, quite ill drawn and formless \u00e2\u20ac\u201c viridian, yellow ochre and navy blue. Lucien Freud also lived with a nasty little number by C\u00c3\u00a9zanne, L\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Apr\u00c3\u00a8s midi \u00c3\u00a0 Naples. Freud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own self-portrait in this show was dismal. Thick paint, once it is dry should never be painted over. It made me itch. Lord Leighton had a dubious small Tintoretto and Van Dyck had a wonderful Titian.<\/p>\n

Well, so much for art.<\/p>\n

I wandered up to the National Portrait Gallery to see \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Beep\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse than ever this year. The most revolting thing of all was a photo-realist job of Andrew Motion. Motion is an unfortunate name for a poet but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good description of his portrait, and from the little I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read of them, his verses as well. Oh, and I nearly forgot. After the Painters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Paintings show I popped upstairs to see the Humbrol bloke from Coventry and his woodscapes. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This exhibition fills a much-needed gap.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

After another search of the library I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve accepted that Sir Thomas Lawrence is no longer there. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny how books go missing. It can be of hardly any interest to anybody but in the process of looking I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discovered a few old favourites: The Biggles Omnibus and a fat book of Maigret stories (illustration: Jean Gabin as the sleuth). I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking forward to reading these again. A few years ago Penguin started re-publishing some of the early Maigret stories and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find them all that interesting. In those early pieces Simenon had yet to discover the importance of digression which is one of the great pleasures of his later stories. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really interested in what Maigret had for breakfast, whether he has a demi-blanc with his croissants, and I love the way he is always sending down to the Brasserie Dauphine on the Quai des Orf\u00c3\u00a8vres for beer and sandwiches when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the middle of a long interrogation.<\/p>\n

Back to the Humbrol Man. At no point during his rather complicated tree pictures does he take advantage of a slip of the brush. Nothing is allowed to enliven his initial intention. You will search in vain for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153free gift\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and they would have looked much better on wood. The interesting piece among his life drawings was one of Aphrodite at the Waterhole, Tony Hancocks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 great sculpture from The Rebel.<\/p>\n

A large, shell-off crustacean with a head-mounted penis emerges from Barry Humphries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 left sleeve. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heading for the Dame\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face with her mismatched eyes. I am of course attending the new exhibition of David Hockney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s portraits at the Royal Academy. Hockney should be congratulated for making a little go a long way. I suppose it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his Yorkshire thrift. Squeeze out the shrimp paste and mix it here and there with a bit of white. It should be called The Prawn Show. He has an electric motor to make his easel go up and down and employs a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153studio manager\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Maybe I should get one \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201c that must be where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been going wrong. He even has someone to squeeze his tubes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not intended as a double entendre. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite good at shoes. I think these portraits are meant to be seen as an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinstallation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and not individually \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinterrogated\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just as well. Hockney is another painter who has never let a happy accident enliven his pictures. What a plodder.<\/p>\n

But who am I to slag off a national treasure. Well, I suppose it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so bitter and twisted I recommend a good slagging off. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much more fun.<\/p>\n

A few years ago an artist and good friend of mine, Whingeing Loser in fact, wrote a critical piece about some aspects of the art business, which he showed to someone connected with his local arts council. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You do realise,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d this worthy said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that if you publish this your career will be over.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d To which my friend replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What career?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Thus was born The Dreadnoughts, we who will slag off anyone. Fear us, we are the future.<\/p>\n

Now, some notes on my recent beauty panels…<\/p>\n

I like to have things unfinished and go back to them later, sometimes years later, and then I know exactly what to do with them. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good way of avoiding the demon of preciosity which can creep up on you and has a paralysing effect.<\/p>\n

Every 20 minutes or so I like to take a break, wander into the front room, see what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going on in the street. Check how the sukebind is coming on. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slow to flower this year but the beans are doing well.<\/p>\n

I do a lot of work from the video screen these days. You have to work fast because if your equipment is anything like mine it jumps after about ten minutes. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just like working from life without the chalk. I get a lot of films from my friend Kenny, who runs an exotic shop on Goodge Street, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done a fair bit of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGonzo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 stuff but I find it rather formulaic. I prefer the transitional movements when the figures are moving between partners and may be a bit off-balance. It would be hard to capture any other way except through photographs but that means you are using someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choice \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by stopping the films the choice becomes your own.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working on my men recently ever since Laura Gascoigne described mine as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccyphers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I think she was right but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re much better now. I got into this way of working because I like to draw the nude, but my nudes have to be doing something. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand pictures of some poor woman shivering by a radiator.<\/p>\n

In the past the use of nude models served to illustrate mythological themes but those times are long gone. So what, I ask you, do people do with their clothes off? I recommend that you pop along to Kenny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and discover some rare and wonderful things.<\/p>\n

Dick French<\/strong>
\nThe Jackdaw Sept\/Oct 2016<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a room in my flat that I rather grandly refer to as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Library\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. About 20 years ago I had it fitted out with shelves up to the ceiling with nicely boxed-in corners. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s painted deep red. For a few years it looked splendid, then it gradually started filling up with junk. Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[405,202,78,404],"class_list":["post-1727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-carracci","tag-david-hockney","tag-national-portrait-gallery","tag-the-national-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}