Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (1662)

Rembrandt paints the moment the deal is struck. The drapers syndics cast their critical idea over the Rembrandt's materials. 

We're not sure about any of these ideas Mr van Rijn. Do you have anything else? 

You don't like that? Well, then, just as you are, right now. That's fine. Like that. Like you are.

And the best thing is that he persuades them. So the Syndics cast their critical eye on us. Measure us up - it's a negotiation - no-one must be sold short. 

an atrium in the desert

Paul Klee making visible (making im-material)
On at the Tate Modern, London until 9th March 2014

1. 
Hotel rooms. lego blocks 
by a lake. atrium in the desert
at the top of the green fields
the Kasbah folding up into the size of a postage stamp

through a letter box. 
trailing umbilical cord
hushed flaps sail. I can see it all. 

2. traces

at the museum Neue Kunst Hans Goltz
a clockwork mechanism counts down
the silent fishing rod hook beneath the lake
pendulum still, rotations still
tides round the hot lazy sun. 

3. 
tattoos peeling off the sheets
scrolls pressed and dried
toner unfixed
I press through the sheets 
and oil on my palms. 

substance - glass - scales 
shield and reflect 
but the gills let the right ones in

4. 
In the aerodrome hotel a telescope landing strip

the city flattens out. 

5.  etre 
ruined architraves
ancient futures in fish eye memories
the memory of bulbs, from inside out
slicing through the onion epidermis

sandstone's memory, an ocean mountain

this is a concentration game
like a computer game
pinball. architect. dot matrix
woven tear garden

6. 
The cloth makers cottages along Claygate. Three children run to sunday school or out onto the wash. The light curves drawn out onto the open fields. The land here is beneath sea level and so water flows downhill towards the centre. The birds know this and nest. The alphabet's visible root structures. It's the catastrophe of a dream. It's a dot on the map. 

Gerhard Richter: Portraits

Gerhard Richter: Portraits
National Gallery, London
27 February - 31st May 2009

Razor sharp focus. It’s a prerequisite of the photography industry. The images that surround us offer the eye the illusion of every detail. For this reason viewing Gerhard Richter’s Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery challenges the eye.

The hallmark of Richter’s portraits are paintings that subordinate the photographic image for very different ends. The canvases offer the shapes of figures which on closer inspection break up into flat layers of paint. Richter’s most striking technique, which is in evidence throughout this retrospective, is to rake a brush across the damp canvas smudging the tones together. The result gives an appearance of automatism to his images; As if they had been produced by a period photocopier or printer. These surfaces are Richter’s tool to inhibit the viewer’s attempt at interpretation. From a photograph we expect a copy of reality. However, here the viewer is required to consider a number of visual contradictions: paintings that appear to be photos, figures that remain illusive, canvases that have the appearance of mass produced objects.

The exhibition contains further illuminating contrasts in Richter’s work. The atrium of the gallery is filled with Richter’s monumental 48 Portraits a work which dryly offers us a canon of great white males looking down on the viewer. Take the elevator to the upper galleries and you rise up through the ranks. However, the prevalent subject matter here is not the iconic image but the family portrait. This is an object that he describes as a modern ‘devotional picture.’ With these images Richter offers the viewer a chance to glimpse into personal relationships while emphasizing their conceal realities. Richter portrays his daughters in a way that both captures personality and side steps it by hiding the subject’s face of using an unusual angle. In a small self-portrait Richter appears to be emerging from deep inside the picture. Coming into focus, but looking away from the camera as if to resist its gaze.

The final surprise is Richter’s installation of a mirror in the gallery as the exhibition’s final work. Richter compares the mirror to one of his paintings, suggesting that it offers a semblance of the thing without showing us the object itself. Seeing oneself staring into the mirror with the traffic of the gallery behind offers exactly this experience. It reminds me of Velasquez’s Las Meninas; suddenly we’re

Lowlands

I travelled to The Hague and Delft, home of 17th century painter Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer's archetypal image is that of the figure at the window. An interior flooded with cool light. They offer a naturalism pregnant with allegorical possibility.

A girl in servants clothing looks over her shoulder, exposing a pearl earring. The iconic image resides in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, concealing a mystery that rivals the Mona Lisa's smile. It's miniature size and canvas stripped bare of context gives the image the quality of a deftly executed part work. The floating fragment of a unrealised idea.

My travel photos also offer a speculative narrative . I went looking for the quality of Vermeer's light, falling through the curtains, through the blinds. Here are some fragments. I'm putting them together to see if they might suggest a story







images (c) David Foster 2009

Cy Twombly

Images: Cy Twombly
Text: Cy Twombly with errors, emendations, inclusions, and collaging by David Foster

Cy Twombly , Ferragosto V 1961

*

Please remain behind the line. cross the line. line of trees. line drawn up.
letters wake, shake out the sleep begin to resemble

*

Ferragosto paintings

touching flesh
body tastes
water interludes
U U U days age
131415

globes
fruit juices
wanton sky
feria lights
ache
crusted

hardly a
noun all
summer
touching
big sex
huge cunt
fruits
almost waking
lift my head

Cy Twombly, (Untitled) Bolsena 1961

Bolsena Series

cloud 9. sun. bulb. 335. 3 1/2. 1 67. 144. 17 ½ . 2. by 2 by 3. number II. CT. 67. 2. 3. 7 ½ . 92. void (3) (3) w. w. w. bulb. sum.

38. 2 ½ . 4. just. 1 ½ . 7 – 11. 3 ½ . brushing. orbits. 124. 200. 126 – 700. 180.214. overlay. clearing 14 O E. 12662870. error 0 3 x.

sssssssswch. ssssssssssswch. 2/8. 2 over 1 2 2 stage 2 4. 1964. raise vertical. N028. ½ . 3 4 2. 4 < 4/5. 1801. 224. 14x20. 18x20 lay. stem and out

*

Veil Paintings

shuttle. rails. convey.

sheets along the plain

one moment also proceeds

conveyance purring trail. chalk grates

mail pouring. commute

inside the falling veil.

*

Untitled 1971

roomful and not even . so

rain . rain from the east

rain through the day. rain at dusk.

Cy Twombly, The Wilder Shores of Love 1985

Shores

grid bubbles sur-wake
as if glass mirrors. the surface of the
scatter. In the hall. rain leaks
pigment. braile. sur-wake. drowns
breathing. tow gondolas through the. rake sifting
channel dredge up. notes scatter. window
blows open.

Cy Twombly, Quattro Stagioni: Primavera 1993-5

Quattro Stagioni

1. And you who thought of happiness fleeing would feel the
illumination that almost overwhelms and will.
motes suture happiness pulling little falls

2. goodbye cumulus. high on light and white youth. forever touching it melts and faints. goodbye Catullus. you made me realise.

3. Autumn sweet breads. passenger, you’re Priam B.S.E.E.M.S you beetroot fog.
and yet in the south and exceeding moon like

*
Cy Twombly, Cycles and Seasons
At the Tate Modern , London
19th June - 14th September, 2008
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/

Here’s an introduction to Twombly’s work
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue13/cytwombly.htm