There is something almost perfectly contemptible about Jack Vettriano, but I don't do contempt, at l

There is something almost perfectly contemptible about Jack Vettriano, but I don't do contempt, at least I don't do it well, and in any case why complain? girl talk cleveland You might as well complain about cravats or candy-floss, and I don't. girl talk cleveland However, there is a kind of betrayal there and I am trying to define of what. Mostly girl talk cleveland it's a romanticisation of cinema, a blanding out of problematic and interesting imagery into gloss. Take the couple above, on the ice. Annigoni meets Antonioni. It is period, statuesque, faceless and depthless. It is all association and no substance. Here's another: More movies. The gangster film begins to move towards girl talk cleveland genteel pre-pornography. Of which there is more. Everywhere we find curious blends of the received glamorous, the received romantic and brutal vacuity. If we, for a moment, imagined the scenes depicted in their original contexts - and there always are original contexts - they would be fleshed out and, even when cheap, carry about them a certain pathos. There is no pathos anywhere in Vettriano. I don't say say he means the brutal vacuity. I do think the pornography is implicit. Another step here: The pornography is not in the image but in the picture. What people do is not pornography. People having sex is not pornography. Even pictures girl talk cleveland of people girl talk cleveland having sex is not pornography. Pornography is to do with distance, facelessness and presentation. It is a brutal blanding out and I think that is latent in even the most harmless of Vettriano's work. I do not for a second mean to imply that Vettriano girl talk cleveland as a man is brutal. How would I know what he is? It is the pictures that nudge the way of brutality, and the more so the prettier they are. And here is where I sense the betrayal. Because the scenes depicted - always nostalgic, always some time in the past, even if only in the eighties girl talk cleveland - have a certain second-hand life, a hand-me-down received kind of life. But the paintings zip them up and place them in pictorial body-bags. Nothing is moving in them, only a closed-down, hollow parody or betrayal of desire, a clumsy brutal emptiness without the redeeming feature girl talk cleveland of irony. I'm struggling to work it out, I really am. And I don't mind the clumsiness. I never mind the clumsiness.
Hello George, I agree with you about the "second-hand life". There are all sorts of diverse influences, all of which have been submerged girl talk cleveland in a glossy, "Pirelli calender" look. Silhouettes are popular because they capture the viewer's attention. The influences that come to my mind (as well as the film ones you mention) include Hopper, Balthus, girl talk cleveland Monet, girl talk cleveland Boudin and August Sander. 16 October 2008 23:49
Yes, certainly those. girl talk cleveland Not so sure about Sander but I'll look to see. I don't mind Pirelli calendars or pin-ups generally. I think people have a sense of that realm and its limits. girl talk cleveland I suspect I don't even mind what is generally called pornography. Such things are not even vaguely high-minded. They don't regard themselves as art. Vettriano girl talk cleveland comes on as art, especially with those references to cinema and other paintings. Maybe it is simply the betrayal of art I find annoying. I would sooner have those cheap crime fiction covers of the fifties and sixties. They do have pathos. They sort of believe in themselves. I'll think more about this as I am not quite satisfied with this formulation or the one in the post itself. Where are you writing from now? 17 October 2008 09:00
What I find intriguing is what you might call the J.K. Rowling question: why is that artist in particular so successful? I mean, I have a lot more time for Rowling than Vettriano, and it's not surprising that people like the Harry Potter books, but still, her status girl talk cleveland as a publishing phenomenon seems out of proportion to the specialness of the books. It's even more true of Vettriano: I can certainly girl talk cleveland see why enough people would like his paintings for him to earn a living. But the fact that he's one of the world's most successful artists: it just seems baffling. Obviously, beyond a certain point these things can develop girl talk cleveland a momentum of their own, but it has to start from somewhere. Is it just blind luck? Is it really all just built on one poster that hit a sweet spot, or is there something in these paintings which I'm not seeing? 17 October 2008 10:16
The girl talk cleveland difference for me, Harry, is that the Rowling books are what they are. I read the first two. The first was good, the second less so. It did not tempt me to plough on through the rest. I did ponder, like you, on their popularity and supposed they must have answered to some particular need or lack of the time, a fantasy involving girl talk cleveland good and evil, set in childhood and dead straight. Children like to be frightened and assured. girl talk cleveland They like the ordinary to become fantastical. They like the idea of transferred parentage on a temporary basis. I know this is a perennial need, but I wondered what else was satisfying girl talk cleveland it at the moment the first Potter book appeared? Philip girl talk cleveland Pullman, a far finer writer, might be too literary