Book of the month
for August, is Michael Foley’s, ‘Embracing the Ordinary’. Not so much an ‘art’
book like I normally opt for in these reviews, but this month we’re taking the term ‘art’ at its most broadest and most
encompassing in looking at the banal, the humdrum, the everyday, the mundane
and (for you academics out there) the quotidian. Besides, what could be more
artistic than the ordinary?...
That question, I
suppose is what Foley is attempting to answer or convince his reader into
believing in this book. That the daily commute to work, the paperclips and
rubber bands of office paraphernalia, the supermarket shop, the wakening
moments of the morning spent observing the shapes on the ceiling, light hitting
the edges of kitchen appliances, everyday conversations and garden weeds can
all be fascinating, interesting or even beautiful or sublime if we take the
time to notice. In fact, he goes on to explain, that it is in these moments of
everydayness that we do most of our contemplating and have some of our best
ideas. Embracing the ordinary is a state of mind (or as Foley explains a
philosophy of Rusism) where, what are irritating weeds to the gardener, are
also remarkably resilient, adaptable and brilliantly named (such as, hemlock,
stinking hellebore, fleabane and hairy bittercress –not exactly charming names,
but do as the book elaborates sound like the names of a hoard of goblins)
plants. This is not to say that the gardener has to suddenly adopt a love for
weeds but in principle the positive attitude and open mindedness that goes with
being able to appreciate really mundane things is something that might make the ordinary parts of our lives all
the more enriching. Phew! Pretty preachy
stuff, you may think, but the point Foley makes is that artists have been doing
it for centuries,
‘One approach is to use the arts to develop
a new perception, an imaginative relabeling of the everyday world. It is not
what you look at that matters but what you see.’
The main examples
Foley refers to throughout the book are Vermeer, Hopper, Caulfield and the more
recent Turner Prize 2011 nominee George Shaw (interestingly all painters!)
However there are plenty more artists such as, Duchamp, Cage, Johns to name a
few that could have been mentioned in support of the same idea. Foley does
discuss other photographers such as the contemporary urban explorers dedicated
to seeking out and exploring abandoned churches, cinemas, offices etc. He
argues this is almost a creative form of recycling or these sorts of
perspectives allow the potential of what were once ‘dis-used’ and run-down
spaces become transformed into works of art.
The bulk of the
book, however, uses detailed analysis of works of literature by James Joyce and
Marcel Proust to explain how the authors used and re-created/re-presented the
everyday of their own lives and observations into their writing. Although as
someone that has never read ‘Dubliners’ or ‘À la recherche du temps
perdu’ this was a little bit lost on me, but in the context of the chapter
headings, ‘the everyday self’, ‘the everyday environment’ and ‘the significant
of the insignificant’ explained enough for me to get the idea. Arguably we’re
all experts of everyday life anyway as any kind of life (regardless of
circumstances of wealth or poverty) can become ordinary if it has become
routine.
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| Another two books cited in 'Embracing the Ordinary': The Mezzanine by Baker and An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris by Perec |
What I found most exciting in particular, was
not only the many arty references and reaffirming of the life enhancing and
transformative power of art,
‘Art is not about artefacts and artiness.
Art is humility, engagement, exploration, discovery, cognition, experience and
above all renewal.’
But also the
reference to two amazing books I have previously read that make for a fantastic
‘linking things together’ opportunity in this review. Namely, the painstaking
observations of Georges Perec in ‘An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris’
and the witty musings of Nicolson Baker in ‘The Mezzanine’. Perec himself writes,
that the aim of his writing is to record, ‘what happens, when nothing happens’.
His choice of location, Place Saint Sulpice, Paris where the author writes the
sights, the slogans, the sounds and occurrences that litter everything. The
result is a book that is more like an inventory of bus numbers, pigeon counts,
billboard slogans, people, weather and food consumed by Perec as he does his
observing. Boring? You ask. Well, it could be but it’s these little details
that create an impression of the place, its people, the atmosphere and events
that take place there. When one considers that painting, film and music are essentially
made up of what is usually a harmonious combination of elements such as colour,
tone, pace, light, rhythm etc. If you single each of these elements out on
their own they seem very simple and the point that Perec is making is that
these very simple everyday elements like the bus numbers come together with the
weather and the number of pigeons etc to make the bigger picture. Foley uses Perec as an example of how narrative
can be found in the everyday and that the individual details can be as
beautiful as the whole. ‘The Mezzanine’ is another example of a novel that is more
of a descriptive homage to the banal as it describes one office workers day
taking great care in observing the items on the desk and the way in which the
mind wonders and daydreams on banal things, such as ‘why does one shoe lace
always wear out before the other?’ It’s actually quite funny and uncannily
accurate and human. I like the kind-of absurdity of books that point-out the
obvious. Foley writes how the success of comedy is precisely that, noticing the
everyday things we do and pointing out their frivolity or ridiculousness. I’d
definitely recommend reading or at least trying a bit of either of these
novels.
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| The home of the SAW blog. In all its mundanity! |
The good thing
about ‘embracing the everyday’ is that for artists, nothing is more everyday
than the studio (or if not maybe they’d like it to be everyday!), but what I
mean is that to the artist who uses it, their studio is very familiar and
therefore debatably ‘everyday’. For me, this is one of the great things about
Open Studios for this year’s Somerset Art Weeks. The opportunity (as an
outsider) to see the familiar, the everyday working spaces of artists, the
materials, equipment, utensils, sounds, smells, paraphernalia and things that
make up a studio space. Whilst some of
the stereotypical items being the same in most studios (I’m thinking brushes,
old chairs, rags, pencils etc.) no two studios will ever really be the same in their
subtleties of differences or mediums. The studios can sometime become the work
as much as the artwork made within them.
Some artists may take offence to this, after all who wants to spend
weeks on a painting to then be upstaged by the palette! However in truth,
although painful, that can often be the case (I’ve been there!). My personal response
to this is that it’s ok to celebrate that the palette may have an accidental
beauty but the worked-on, crafted and developed painting also has a beauty to
it just of a different kind. Anyway it’s
like acknowledging that the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece, but who wouldn’t be as
equally excited (if not more so) by seeing the Da Vinci’s studio it was created
in? Tourists flock to locations such as Roald Dahl’s garden shed in which he
wrote his books. Not that people are necessarily visiting those places to see
an old chair, or garden shed, but it is the significance of seeing these often
very mundane places that authors/artists create in that inspire people into
thinking, maybe I could do that? And that some of the most imaginative,
creative and original writings or artworks are made in the most ordinary of
settings. Who knows, event the location of the SAW blog might one day be of
interest (ha ha)! Anyway, the result of all this reading, wondering and pontificating
is that books such as the one reviewed
here, ‘Embracing the Ordinary’ offer a different and refreshing perspective
that as a result got me thinking about how I felt about the everyday in
relation to this year’s Open Studios. Already being a self-confessed addict of
tools, umbrellas and sublime tat of all kinds, you’d be right to think I
probably didn’t need much convincing. You’d be right, but nonetheless I still
enjoy reading more on the subject of banal, and it was this weeks’ Paralympics
opening ceremony that was festooned with umbrellas as a symbol for British-ness
that proved that I am perhaps not alone in this way of thinking. In its humble
honesty and intimacy perhaps Open Studios has a greater power for inspiring
people than in the sometimes deemed ‘intimidating’ gallery space?
We shall see...
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