Aliki Krikidi

Aliki Krikidi thinks of the city as a territory that is hard to break out of, where everyone keeps their head down. Perhaps this is to guard against the leaking out of personality.

I like the style of her work, and her thoughts about "the mask that the city wears" which provides it with "an unmistakeable persona" that defines "the rituals of its inhabitants".

She talks of the "desire of the city" (by which she presumably means the collective emotion of the individuals who live there) to be "recognised" being "indivisible from its desire to be immortal, to overcome the morality of its residents".

This is another level of thinking that I don't quite get, but want to think about!

I also like the glances that are captured in the work shown below. The places where the city, keeping its head down, avoiding contact, suddenly or momentarily catches the eye. It is what is seen then, the haunted life of the city, that is moving.

Mara Bodis-Wollner

What I like about her work is the way she takes pictures that are obviously staged, but that contain more, somehow. Real life leaks out at the edges of the pictures. There are details that transcend the performance.

This way of thinking reminds me of my train video work... I must try to connect the two...

There is an element of performance in people's public expression of themselves, even when they attempt to conceal it, as here.

Stephen Farthing

I listened to Stephen Farthing and felt some affinity with things he was saying.

For example he said that it is important to enjoy your work. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, then you are probably doing the wrong thing.

I also liked the way his work grows in the studio, it isn't all mapped out in his head beforehand. He is "constructing realities, not observing realities". This is how I work.

And it's good to hear some other things, too, just small details. Like the fact that he paints while listening to Talk Radio and can't paint to music, because music affects his work.

Doug Fishbone

I enjoyed a talk from Doug Fishbone. What I liked best about it was his urgency: if you think of something, just do it. A good example is the heap of bananas he dumped in Trafalgar Square. He had the idea and just went for it.

It's a strong and striking idea. How would the public put 30,000 bananas in context? Do they think of global food issues? What happens when people come up and help themselves to the bananas?

There's also the story of Nigerian films. He had noticed there were plenty of Nigerian films in his newsagent, but they were full of black people. So he went to Nigeria and talked himself into a Nigerian film.

The obvious analogy would be to a version of Othello where the entire cast is black, except for Othello, who is white.

Fishbone says that he doesn't necessarily come up with any brilliant new ideas, but he does follow through on the ideas he has.

Yellowism

What do I think of yellowism?

I know a man has been charged with defacing the Rothko painting. "Wlodzimierz Umaniec, 26, a Polish national of no fixed abode, will appear at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. Mr Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, is charged with one count of causing criminal damage in excess of £5,000."

All accounts talk about the value of the painting, in millions of pounds. That seems somehow beside the point, but with art today, talk of money is never far away. Umaniec says it wasn't vandalism, it was a case of yellowism.

What is yellowism?

This is from the website and I confess it doesn't make much sense to me.

Umanets has compared himself to Marcel Duchamp. He has said:

"Art allows us to take what someone's done and put a new message on it."

Duchamp once doodled on a postcard depicting the Mona Lisa. And there are other examples of artists changing or adapting copies of great works of art. See Mary Beth Edelson in an earlier blog and her adaptation of The Last Supper.

The difference here is that it is a real piece of art that has been changed. For me, this seems a kind of arrogance, something of a publicity stunt; and a real act of vandalism. It spoils a work of art that people have come to see – that belongs to them, not the yellowist. His actions may make it more difficult for people to get close to art in the future. That can't be a good thing.