The Good, the Bad and the Ugly... Screens and Street Art...

The old wall at the local Lidl was 'upgraded' some time ago, in line with the refurbished store itself. While that was all well and good, unfortunately the great expanse of 'concrete canvas' was lost in the process.

I wondered where the street artists and lesser common-or-garden graffists had gone in order to carry on their creative activities. As it turned out, some of them had not gone too far from the initial site, having moved along to the old dry docks on the outskirts of the city.

The national rail company -SNCF - has supported this urban art project. A long stretch of wall beyond one of the residential areas of the city has been given over to this.

The resulting art really is a case of the good, the bad and the ugly - though I will only concentrate on the great ones - whose brilliance in design, colour and execution just bursts out from these scaly, grey urban surfaces.

There must be similar walls to be tracked down in other districts, but there is more pleasure when encountering these quite unexpectedly rather than via Google search.

I really hope that the artists get the recognition that they deserve and sufficient material means to carry out their work. However, both must be limited, I suppose.

This stretch is in a remote part of the urban landscape that only car-drivers cross through, quite possibly without even noticing the works of art on their left.

Even if they do, they may not be able to slow down to admire them as is merited. Just taking the photos here, from my bike, proved a little challenging as straight expanses of road tend to favourise speeding!

I did speak to a few of the old 'Lidl artists' some time ago. They did not have any specific formal training, but their art was a continuation, in grand format, of the drawings and doodles scrawled onto their school books.

In this age, engrossed and entertained by vacuous (self)image and increasingly meaningless labels and qualifications, seeing such an explosion of authentic expression and presence - apparently detached from any financial/material gain - is rare.

Maybe my vision is coloured by my present mood, but it seems that everything is being geared towards the provision of platforms that operate as a succession of carnival mirrors for the populations.

Barrages of screens enable us to gaze at ourselves, through distorted/distorting reality, for narcissistic entertainment and existential validation, all in front of an avid public ready to like... or not.

That might not be so problematic in itself, but this seems to be leading to an inability to maintain anything more than a fleeting focus on anything in particular - we are just encouraged to click on and on - like nosy bystanders, ever ready for the bait of a bit of cheap titillation. We are playing in and at a virtual reality that enables us to live our lives vicariously, or as voyeurs to the game-playing of the others, but surely this will make what is actually real become senseless, pointless, redundant?

For all our access to endless information - we seem to have adopted a blasé approach to the wonders around us - with curiosity taking a direct hit, as we are lost in distraction. An explanation was offered to me recently; since everything is now available at a click on one small device there is less need to learn or live through the challenges of a learning experience when a 'result' is within reach.

Different wall - same city - Punk's not dead!

That seems to be another example of the good, the bad and the ugly - quite accurate, yet it renders everything 'pretty vacant' to quote the Sex Pistols (any excuse to listen to something with some authentic life to it!). It is funny to think that the angry and anarchic displays of the Seventies' Punks were a nightmare vision for many, yet we now have a bunch of Millennium zombies, the Filming Dead, brandishing dumb smartphones, desperate not to miss out on anything.... The irony could kill you.

Third and Final for the Month...

As there is no way I'll ever prepare a third post for this mad month of March, I'll just cheat and use my orchid shots - pink and purple this time.

Maybe these colours will bring some warmth to the temperature outside and the mood within!

There is a magical full moon tonight - perhaps the best way to usher in the month of April and say goodbye to March!

Plimsoll Lines....

According to dictionary definition, the term 'Plimsoll Line' refers to the marking on a vessel's side, showing the limit of legal submersion when loaded with cargo under various sea conditions. Right now, I feel like some old boat, sinking under the weight of my work obligations. So, while I had actually planned on writing a proper post, this one will have to do.... Still, I do think these are such beautiful flowers and of an appropriate colour - blue !

Last Day of Winter...

So this was the last day of Winter and yet the snow and ice have returned!

So what better than some bright warmth from orchids...

These are so exotic, yet as they are seemingly available everywhere, they seem strangely commonplace...

However, one careful look would be enough to awaken our jaded senses, especially in this extended winter period.

Purple - again...

End of the month, and no time to write anything... This seems to have become more than a passing trend, and whilst time ticks along at the usual pace, 

I seem to be doing less and less in absolutely every area of life - except work.

 I have to find a way out of this particular set-up and state of affairs.

But in the meantime....

Since the rabbit has taken residence at home, I have been making time to go to the garden centre each Sunday to stock up on bunny-adapted supplies. Well, that's my official excuse to look at the array of plants and animals there.

I saw these beautiful cabbage leaves - sold as floral decoration - a few months ago, and kept them in my mind's eye.

Even the humblest of vegetable can be a source of aesthetic wonder!

Even if the more obvious forms initially catch our attention, each has its own beauty.

City Snow...

Little did I know that the blue skies at the beginning of February would give no indication to how the weather would change over the weeks. Snow came and went, cloaking everything in a fleeting layer of calm, momentarily muffling the usual humdrum sounds of city life, yet leading to chaos on the roads, rails and runways. With a little imagination, you could almost imagine yourself to be somewhere else, in some other time…

This reminded me of a beautiful card that I have kept over the years – Riders and Dogs in Snow – by the British watercolourist, Leslie Worth (1923-2009). The simplicity of this peaceful scene offsets the precision of the details so that you can feel the cold, with all the associated sensations in the tranquility of the landscape. The ruffled feathers of the blackbird, puffed-up against this harsh environment, stand out against the simple, stark bramble branches. The static gaze of the riders towards us, is contrasted by the excitement of the dogs, whose energy you can feel in their eager tails as they wait for the masters’ command.

This, in turn, reminded me of the painting Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Strange how animal traits change little over the centuries, and how well artists capture these, when their portrayals of key human features often fail, or remain caught in a specific moment of time, that are poorly 'translated' in the present...

It seems that much of Leslie Worth’s art captures a similar mood, centred around the changing English weather– hazy views over landscape transformed by rain, mist, sunlight and storm. Although his early work was largely carried out in oil, after having submitted two watercolours to the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1951, he then turned towards this lighter medium. He had not studied the use of watercolour, but his technique and choice of scenery seemed to be instinctive. Born in North Devon on Derby Day, Worth would say the winning horse ‘Papyrus’ was surely a sign of things to come. Indeed, much of his life was spent around Epsom and paper was his material of predilection, and the base of the watercolours for which he was mostly, yet not exclusively, acclaimed.

Here we are at the end of the month – again with radiant skies that belie the minus 10° outside…

Progression...Towards lighter evenings - Le Progrès

Le Progrès - Levalet - Reims

On this beautifully sunny (and cold) tail-end of a Sunday afternoon, I came across these two surveyors near the cathedral. Another work by the street artist Levalet. I do hope he carries on lightening up the walls around the city! Still bright skies after 5pm here...