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Re: lifedrawing

From:     Ben Zanoe
Category: Art
Date:     01 July 2009
Time:     01:45 PM

Review:

Life Drawing invented in the Renaissance, daughter of Byzantium Bisexuals and the triumphant mascara
of cave dwelling baby sitters from Goth, Thracian and Vandal parentage.  Abused as the toy of Empire
and gentry as a universal inventory and as the earliest form of lead guitar by Holbein the Jungre
who, feted by royalty and God alike for his twelve bar adoration of the spank addicted in-breeding
twat-Heads of State slyly took a kings schilling whilst he ordered a new front loading Focke-Wolf
190 Drawing Obscura. 
Just why the bitter divorce rolled on between Mrs Catholic Landscape and Mr Protestant  Portrait
through the hearts and minds of typographic pamphleteers, horse thieves and Grotowskian Clowns we
will surely, never, never admit that we were nations of bodkin steering tapestry moles, But like the
children of a soured marriage we wander these galleried throngs with sarcasm, cynicism and "it is'nt
fair" writ large with sable, with silver pencil and pouncing brush and a mahl stick across the
withers every so often. Looking it is said, (sadly) for perfection without innocence. 

Everyone can draw and most can draw figurative likenesses if they really want to, like most things
it's about choice (rhymes with Beuys) rather than ability.  Dave Cockney , although a mega-star in
my estimation, uses a pencil, some standard grade paper and a good old sprinkle of Semantics, the
problem is that we interpolate Cockneys theories and views as fact - that painting is "better" than
photography, he knows its a nonsensical statement about incomparable concepts but his world, his
Psychotic Obsession with images as language is a dam site better than the po faced antics of say;
Martian Parr's sneering through the class war with the soul stealing dageurotype , this is the other
thing you can do with glass and sunlight. That other recent quickie= Abstract v Figurative was
thought to be a sort of joke much in the vein of the roadside chicken, something advertised on
daytime TV between a Sir Paul McCartney interview about his operetta and Rolf Harris' tearful eulogy
to one of Madonna's newly purchased children but it keeps repeating indigestably like one of Charles
Windsors organic pasties in the gut of yer average (marginalised) tax paying Cornish That both the
figurative and the abstracted are abstractions seems larger than ten elephants standing in Highgrove
House, so be it, lets not spoil the fun, after all The Royal Academy of Arse demand £50 for each
Summer Show Submission, even though hardly a tenth get hung, The Threadneedle asks for several
Puffins in tithes, transport companies and Parker get out the Rolls, yes M'Lady, and another thing
Parker, everyones got a camera now, in their phone, on their heads poking up their trouser legs,
this whole Golden Section legacy, forget it if you've only just started because Anthony Gormley
cannot turn ambition into a transferable skill...yet.


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