But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...

Fig. 1: Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the U.K. (EMI, 1976)  

Fig. 2: Kazimir Malevich: Black Square (1915) 

 

 

I.

 

It's hard to resist loving a paper that explores the links between punk, nihilism, politics and the arts, such as the one delivered by Ian Trowell at the Torn Edges symposium at the London College of Communication a few days ago [1].

 

Kazimir Malevich and Malcolm McLaren; Suprematism, Situationism, and the Sex Pistols - what's not to love? 

 

I don't want to say it was the best presentation on the day, but it was probably the one I enjoyed the most - and if Trowell had only thought to entitle his work 'Don't Be (Black) Square Be There', I would've loved it (and him) even more [2].

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly to torpedophiles, the aspect of the talk that most excited concerned the plain black sleeve that 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - the Sex Pistols' debut single - was originally issued in on 26 November, 1976. 

I figure that McLaren would be more than familiar with Malevich's suprematist masterpiece painted sixty years earlier, though don't know if this directly inspired the 'Anarchy' packaging, or if, as Paul Gorman says, the insistence on such a sleeve was simply in line with McLaren's own aesthetic, as seen in his portraits of the 1960s and the clothes designs produced with Vivienne Westwood for Sex [3]. 

 

Either way, it was a great idea for a sleeve; one that not only captures the anarcho-nihilism of the band, but affirms the colour with the greatest symbolic resonance and meaning. 

 

And when EMI executives complained that an all black sleeve with no identifying information would make it extremely difficult for fans to find it in the record stores, Malcolm smiled and said: I don't want them to find it ... [4]

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell is an independent researcher and author exploring themes of popular culture and ideas around myth and memory. His presentation at Torn Edges was entiled '"Anarchy in the UK', 'Black Square', and Pop Nihilism: Exploring the Links between Punk, Nihilism, Suprematism and Situationism". 'Further details of this event and of the other speakers can be found here. Trowell's recently published book - Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent (Intellect Books, 2023) - can be purchased here.

 

[2] The fact that he was wearing an Adam and the Ants T-shirt on the day makes it even more surprising to me that Trowell didn't think of this title. Still, never mind - the presentation was all good clean fun (whatever that means).*  

[3] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 331. Gorman goes on to say that McLaren was also thinking of the infamous 'black page' in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67).

 

[4] There were only a couple of thousand copies of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' issued in the black sleeve; after that, it was sold in the standard EMI sleeve with a hole in the middle so the label information could easily be read. 

      The record reached number 38 in the official UK Singles Chart, before being withdrawn by EMI following the Bill Grundy Incident (1 Dec 1976). The Sex Pistols were eventually fired from EMI on 6 January 1977, but they kept their £40,000 advance and had the last laugh when they included the track E.M.I. on Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records, 1977). 

      To watch the band perform the single 'Anarchy in the U.K.' on the BBC's early evening current affairs show Nationwide (recorded 11 Nov 1976 and broadcast the following day), click here.

 

  

* I'm referring here - for those who don't know - to a track by Adam and the Ants entitled 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here. You may not like it now, but you will ... 

On Painting Ceilings

Kazimir Malevich 
Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918) 
Oil on canvas (79.5 x 79.5 cm)

I.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is certainly an impressive piece of interior decorating and design, incorporating over 340 figures, both clothed and nude, allowing the artist to fully demonstrate his skill in creating a huge variety of poses for the human body (poses that have been much imitated ever since). 

Contrary to popular belief, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying flat on his back, and endured great physical discomfort; eye strain, neck ache, muscle cramps, etc. Little wonder then that he bodged certain sections and that it was left unfinished. Nevertheless, according to Goethe, those who haven't seen this work for themselves can have no appreciable idea of what greatness a single man is capable.


II.

I was thinking of Michelangelo and his High Renaissance masterpiece whilst painting a ceiling in my mother's house over the weekend. Not that I drew inspiration from the Italian; that came rather from the avant-garde Russian artist Kazimir Malevich and his Suprematist composition of 1918 entitled White on White (shown above).  

For that's essentially what I was doing: painting white on white, inch after inch and one polystyrene foam tile after another, using Farrow and Ball's All White Estate emulsion; an expensive but soft and sympathetic paint which provides a chalky, very matt finish, with just a 2% sheen (which is more than enough lustre for any ceiling in my view).      

Whilst most people today probably prefer to use a roller and get the job done as quickly and as conveniently as possible, I like to take my time and prefer to use a small (12 mm) brush, ensuring that individual brush strokes and small imperfections remain evident; the thought of machine-perfect smoothness - or machine-smooth perfection - is anathema to my tastes. 

Having now completed the second coat, I have to confess that I prefer my ceiling in all its infinite and abstract whiteness to Michelangelo's, which - for me - is far too busy and show-offy. It's nice to dispense with illusions of depth and to also rid painting of representation and colour. The foam tiles - that were so popular at one time, but which are now deemed to be a fire hazard - provide a richly textured surface.      

Although I don't much care for his ideal fantasies of purity and spiritual transcendence, I share something of Malevich's exhilaration and know exactly what he means when he claims in his 1919 manifesto to have overcome the lining of the coloured sky and learnt how to swim in the freedom of the white abyss ...

On Entering and Exiting the Fourth Dimension with Gedvile Bunikyte

Portrait of the Artist Gedvile Bunikyte (a.k.a. Grace B) 

by Helena Wimmer (2015)

For those of us who do not belong to the art world and have only limited knowledge of what goes on in this realm where lines and colours and large sums of money reign supreme, there's long been a belief that Suprematism died sometime shortly after Socialist Realism triumphed over geometric abstraction; i.e., when the brutal expression of political ideology negated pure artistic feeling.

Apparently, however, that wasn't the case: Suprematism survived - and still lives on to this day, as we discover in the fascinating work of Gedvile Bunikyte, a.k.a. Grace B., over whose pictures the ghost of Malevich lingers.  

Using a few basic shapes and a limited range of colours, Gedvile takes us back to the future and dares us to experience again the intensity of emotion that belongs to art whenever it frees itself from the banal attempt to visually depict objective reality and allows itself to dream of unseen worlds and vibrate to strange rhythms and possibilities of being.

Miss Bunikyte is, we might say - using a rather old-fashioned idea - an artist of the fourth dimension. In other words, whilst she wants to make some kind of real (but withdrawn) presence immediately visible within the realm of time and space, thereby introducing into our field of vision  something which is neither optical nor merely symbolic, she wants also to transport us to a very different space that is, if you like, outside the gate. 

Nietzsche thought of this space as one of dangerous knowledge, full of tigers and rattle snakes and all the other wonders that the hot sun hatches. But for Gedvile, it needn't be quite such a savage exteriority and contains not only wild beasts, but mathematical equations and beautiful abstractions; a creative realm in which things come to perfection and new forces and forms arise.  

Now, all this might sound suspiciously like the worst kind of mysticism or idealism; an attempt to leave behind the real world of things. However, I'm tempted to think that we might better interpret Miss Bunikyte's work as a weird and speculative form of realism; albeit one concerned with virtual objects rather than actual entities. Thus, unlike those who find all forms of geometric abstraction puerile, I think there's something philosophically interesting and contemporary about her work.     

Gedvile tries to find her own way forward governed by a certain precision, clarity, and discipline. But so too is there a rhythmic violence and an experience of chaos in her work, adding to its beauty and its power. Follow the rhythm and plunge into the chaos and you'll reach the point at which lived experience confronts its limit.

But, crucially, rhythm also relates closely to the question of sympathy - a concept central to modernism - and, by her own confession, Miss Bunikyte is primarily interested in exploring how colours and shapes can express a physiology of feeling. In other words, she's an artist who wants us to feel our way into tomorrow and who, via a series of ever more fascinating abstractions, attests to the intrusion of an occluded realm into the visual world of figuration. 

By providing an artistic medium between natural science, esoteric philosophy, and personal fantasy, Gedvile has created a visionary system and an uncanny paraspace that is both inspirational and transformational; pulsing with real and imaginary energies, her geometrical abstractions challenge and reconfigure the earlier fourth dimensional constructions of late nineteenth and early-twentieth century art.

Like Ouspensky whom she so admires, Gedvile provides us with a small key to the enigmas of the universe. And for that we should be grateful.

Planets, Mountains and Mystical Planes (2014)

Note: those interested in knowing more about Miss Bunikyte and seeing further examples of her work should visit her website: studiogedvilebunikyte.com 

Black Noise (On the Poetry of Francis Ponge)

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) 

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

I'm not sure I fully understand what physicists and audio engineers mean by the term black noise - I think it refers to a noise whose frequency is located close to zero (or what is commonly known as silence) on a spectrum of sound - but I like how philosopher Graham Harman uses the same term within his work to describe the background hum of mysteriously muffled objects hovering at the fringes of human intelligibility.  

Perhaps it's this gentle and virtually-inaudible sound of things that the French prose-poet Francis Ponge was able to attune his ear to ...

Known as the poet of things, Ponge explored the fascinating universe of actual entities - from pebbles to cigarettes, and flowers to bars of soap - in the (admittedly anthropocentric) belief that all objects, whilst remaining fundamentally withdrawn, nevertheless yearn to express themselves and await the coming of a speaking-subject who might hear them and find some way to articulate their near-silence, thereby revealing something of their hidden depths and weird, inhuman otherness.

What I love about Ponge - apart from his object-oriented ontology - is the fact that he avoided all the tired conventions of poetry; such as empty symbolism and allegory, self-indulgent lyricism, or obvious appeals to emotion. He declared himself an enemy of both the drabness of the dictionary and the transcendent posturing of poetry and sought to combine description and definition with the power and purity of elementary language.

His principle aim, therefore, was to defeat the Stereotype and to do so with a form of speculative realism and something extremely rare amongst artists - intellectual integrity.  

Notes

Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics, (Open Court Publishing Company, 2005).

Francis Ponge, Le parti pris des choses (1942). This collection of 32 short to medium length prose poems is available in several English translations, including, most notably, those by Lee Fahnestock, Robert Bly, and Beth Archer Brombert.