The Artist, the town, the PM and the writer.

It was just then she told me she'd got an old man,

She said come round for tea on Sunday if you can,

He'll be in Margate for the day

And that's when I said 'no way'

It's time to walk back to my van.

Excuse that indulgence – a few lines from a song I wrote some time ago. It was in my head when we went to Margate last week; maybe I'll record it soon.

Yes Margate; it's a seaside town in Kent and the painter, JMW Turner, said 'the skies over Thanet (where Margate is) are the loveliest in all Europe.'

He painted over one hundred oils and water colours on his visits there which is a pancake flat semi island jutting in to the North Sea and is surrounded by water on three sides. It has vast skies and dramatic light which was perfect for his art.

He stayed in a guest house in Margate and if you go there today you will see the Turner Gallery on the spot where the guest house stood. 

From one of the windows you can see an impressive vista of the sky, the sea and what Turner must have experienced at the time.

But what is art?

Some people say that it you call yourself an artist you are pretentious and I say, 'Pretentious? Moi???”

There's an ongoing conversation with lots of American actors, and actors from other places, as to whether acting is an art or a craft. 

Personally I don't really care to join the conversation but sometimes it's a bit sickening to hear actors talk about their craft in nearly every sentence. I would just say this – yes it is pretentious to keep talking about your art but a craft?

With a craft you know how it's going to end up – it's going to be a table, a chair, a piece of origami whereas with art – painting, acting, singing or whatever – you don't really know how it's going to end up – and if you do then it becomes an craft.

Now I am not going to mention any names here but when I walked in to the Turner centre; and look at it (above) it's very impressive – I went along a corridor and on the wall there were some pictures and I immediately thought 'oh they are exhibiting some children's pictures; maybe from an infants' class close by?'

The first picture was of a face; just an oval face as any child would draw. It was maybe 18 inches by 24 inches.

An oval face, two dots for eyes, a line for a nose and a smiley mouth. 

In the background was a pair of lips as roughly drawn as the face.

There was nothing else in the picture.

At the side it mentioned who it was drawn by, told us what it was drawn on and gave the dimensions.

Along the wall there were other pictures, all, more or less the same size, and of the same standard.

On the opposite wall, in the corridor, was a monitor playing a DVD.

I put the head phones on and it was an old lady of maybe 70 who was the artist of the pictures on exhibit.

She was talking very seriously about her inspirations and influences and . . . .

What is art?

I haven't said anything derogatory about anybody here but you have to think.

Margate has been a renaissance town of late with quite a few films set there; a television series or two, lots of organic cafés, independent galleries and vintage clothes shops but the day we went it was closed.

The recent series there True Love, was improvised love stories so there must be some attraction – but the day we went not only were the shops closed Margate was closed.

The place has a reputation of all things artistic; Tracey Emin made her bed there, won the Turner Prize with it and contributed to the Turner Centre but, and I have to ask this what is art?

There are people totally devoid of art of any kind. 

Whether you like it or not people following soap operas on TV are following an art form – drama, acting whatever.

I remember in the sixties when a court case was reported in the media a witness would say they were listening to The Beatles or watching James Bond and the judge would ask 'what or who are The Beatles?' or James Bond?

They were obviously living in a different world from anybody else.

When we read Shakespeare there are sometimes funny lines we don't understand. 

These are the same kind of lines that are used in panto here when an act will refer to a TV commercial or programme in a joke. The judge wouldn't get the joke as they don't follow the zeitgeist. 

Politicians have tried to make jokes but when they take their kids to the panto at Christmas they don't get the jokes as they never watch television.

I heard the case of the Canadian Prime Minister of whom it was said never read a novel – just text books and the like.

He was also the Prime Minister who, upon the death of Pierre Tredeau, criticised him instead of paying tribute.

The Canadian writer Yann Martell, who wrote The Life of Pi, sent that Prime Minister, Stephen Harper by the way, a book every month and a letter and Harper didn't even acknowledge him. he sent 101 books and letters.

A very famous Canadian writer, as with The Beatles, who is Yann Martell?

The same Yann Martell wrote to Barack Obama who sent back a hand written note saying that he and his daughter had loved The Life of Pi.

Barack Obama aye?

Appreciate him whilst you have him, America, the road doesn't look too optimistic ahead!

The Eccentric Mr Turner

I have not been been here for a while as life has a funny way of getting in the way of writing, but I did find to time to go to Stratford on Avon over the weekend to see a late night screening of a film – The Eccentric Mr Turner.

Yes a film about England's greatest landscape painter; if not the world's greatest.

The film is a short one and deals with the last part of the great man's life and features a virtuoso performance in the title role by Gary Taylor. With a few flourishes and flicks of the wrist, a nod and a wink here and there and a look in the eye that makes you think, look and wonder, Taylor introduces us to an aspect in the life on JMW Turner that the recent big budget bio-pic missed.

Why the eccentric and why the mister?

When he first started to stay with his eventual last lover, Mrs Booth, he was known, in her guest house, as Mr Booth - and the eccentricity?

The first thing we see in the film is a painting and we hear Turner admonishing someone; the someone in question has made some kind of mistake and made a mess of something – another fine mess you got me into – and we find out that that someone being lectured to, is a horse; his horse!

And the horse's name?

Hercules!

We learn from Mrs Booth, ably played by Tina Parry, that Turner had fallen asleep and Hercules had to find his own way home.

And then he turns his attention to his two cats – Wellington and Napoleon, would you believe – and they are still out and will be disciplined upon their return.

As he wanders around his studio giving instructions to Mrs Booth, he is starting another painting - the painting turns out to be his most famous and notorious Slave Ship which he had completed many years before.

It soon becomes clear that his life is flashing before his eyes as Turner paints and goes through his experiences meeting again his father, to whom he was very close and misses so much: Charles Dickens, The Prince of Wales and George Stephenson.

There he is (above) with the inventor of Stephenson's Rocket looking at the train roaring and snorting away from them.

He also meets two of the crew of the Slave Ship; he learns that the human cargo are treated wretchedly and if any are sick they are thrown overboard.

Just like that – no nursing needed just a chuck over one of the sides.

One of the crew, he meets again, struck up a relationship with one of the women who had been thrown into the ocean and the moving scene thrusts Turner on to the Slave Ship painting, and as we have been watching the film the famous painting slowly but suddenly appears before our eyes.

This has and is a one man stage show and Gary Taylor would paint The Slave Ship at each venue – he must have painted it many times but in this film he had but one chance as the film was shot in one long take.

No edits or cuts just one long take, in pristine black and white shot beautifully by Michael Booth who also directs.

I would like to think that this lovely little film would go on from here – it's low budget but doesn't look it – here is a link to the trailer: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhtoyJWjLE

The Slave Ship is below and here is an excerpt from Turner's "Fallacies of Hope" (1812):

"Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?" 

 

JMW Turner and the Hog's Head.

When the movie, Mr Turner, opens you are left in no doubt that a very important artist is about to make an entrance. Turner's father goes around the market to buy fruit, vegetables and other things that makes you ask the question if they are to eat or to be used as colours – after all this is the one and only JMW Turner, Britain's greatest ever artist; Billy, to his father, Mr Billy to his housekeeper - a housekeeper, who is a strange looking woman, with a stoop and a skin condition which progresses with the movie; he uses her for fleeting sex in passing; she uses him the same with a bit more; he greets her when he comes in with a squeeze of her breasts and a touch of her pubic area through her dress in both cases. He does this when she stands by him sitting in his chair and he gives her the greeting without even looking at her – she doesn't look at him.

I loved this film; I loved everything about it. Some clever clogs might come along and criticise it for leaving some things out and putting some things in which didn't happen but . . .this is a movie and a great one.

I don't know much about Turner at all apart from the fact that his father was a barber and one of the things the father buys at a street market is a pig's head; a whole head. The father – the barber – shaves the pig's head, with a cut throat razer, and when they greet each other they hug and kiss and settle down to eat the pig's head. They cut slices off and munch it down and it is as if Turner has eaten so much pig that he sounds like one. He grunts all the way through the film in fact Timothy Spall plays Turner as a pig; a sympathetic lovable hog.

Laurence Olivier said he based his famous portrayal of Richard III on the Big Bad Wolf; well I think Spall has chosen a pig. His perpetual grunt proves that.

Timothy Spall in Hog Mode.

The film doesn't go into Turner's private life too much; well his really private life; we know there was a wife, two daughters and a very strange looking granddaughter – is it a doll or a reject from Call the Midwife? - but they make two entrances whilst we are treated to his artistic raison d'etre.

It is not a typical Hollywood bio-pic even though Constable is in it and other famous figures like Ruskin but there are no lines like “Mr Rolls meet Mr Royce” or “Engels? Meet Marx.”

It should win some Oscars, and deserves, to – acting, directing, photography – well, I hope so, but I don't think so; certainly some BAFTAs but I would like to see Mike Leigh get it for directing and Timothy Spall for acting from BAFTA and OSCAR.