BIBLIOFILE

The life and death of the poet Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) was recalled on August 2nd 2010, by a service in Brockley & Ladywell cemetery, London SE4 to mark the renovation of his vandalised gravestone. Dowson’s literary reputation has long been in decline, and is now mainly based on the legacy of such kitsch fragments as “the days of wine and roses” and “gone with the wind”, though the contrast between the rarified imagery of Dowson’s short poems and his often miserable existence makes him a fascinating figure, a casualty of the decadent nineties.

Dowson emerges from biographical accounts as a charming dead beat who suffered for his art, and though associated with many fin-de-siècle literary figures, was a marginal, ill at ease member of the Rhymer’s Club, happier drinking absinthe and playing billiards in The Cock, a pub in Shaftesbury Avenue, or carousing in the Alhambra music hall, before either finding a night’s kip on someone’s floor, or making the long trudge back to the unprofitable family dry docking business in Limehouse. A contributor to such journals as Temple Bar, The Yellow Book and The Savoy, chain smoking, congenital TB, and thujone poisoning (the active component of absinthe) steadily wore him down, until his early death in Catford.

Very much a disciple of fellow Catholic Paul Verlaine (whose funeral he attended), Dowson’s collection Verses (1896), showcases his ornamental lyricism. The writing conveys the defeated, somnambulistic mood of a psyche that has imported the French Alexandrine, but is unable to reconcile it with Anglo-Saxon English. Often motivated by unrequited love, or guilt, these poems are cloying and painful to read, with a patina of Classical allusion. However if you excuse Dowson’s fatalism there is much that is admirable in his verse, especially a liking for the moon, night time and amorous trysts, most famously with his beloved muse Cynara. Indeed in Arnold Schoenberg’s lush yet edgy Four Orchestral Songs, Opus 22 № 1 (1916), the composer set a translation by Stefan George of the words of Dowson’s poem ‘Seraphita’…

SERAPHITA

Come not before me now, O visionary face!

Me tempest-tost, and borne along life’s passionate sea;

Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be;

Not here and now may we commingle or embrace,

Lest the loud anguish of the waters should efface

The bright illumination of thy memory,

Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me,

In the serenity of thine abiding-place!

But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,

And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!

Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair,

And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight

But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,

Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.

So Dowson does have an afterlife, and is commemorated by a group of enthusiastic readers who meet each year, and manage a Facebook page on his behalf. It’s nice also to think of him playing "blind chivvy", a game of his own making that involved racing his friend R. Thurston Hopkins from point A to point B across London using only alleys and short cuts, psychogeography avant la lettre.

To quote from W. B. Yeats’s ‘The Grey Rock’ (1914) in words addressed to Old Cheshire Cheese habitués Lionel Johnson and Dowson, “You kept the Muses’ sterner laws, and unrepenting faced your ends”.

This biographical stub accompanies my elegy for Dowson 'The Far Shore' published for the first time in The White Review #3, 2011. www.thewhitereview.org

ARTFILE

In 2004 I was presented with a brief window of opportunity to enter a derelict three storey Georgian house and atelier in Steward Street, Spitalfields, London, prior to its imminent demolition. The building had once been occupied by the now largely forgotten Georgian portrait painter Mason Chamberlin. The plain wooden staircase had collapsed in on itself, so clambering cautiously up to the garret with its dusty weaver’s windows it was hard not to be struck by the absolutely destructive nature of historical change. Alone however in this melancholy space for a few moments my materialist self got the better of its philosophical counterpart as I impulsively wrenched off a 10 inch piece of decorative iron work from the grate of the lovely second floor fireplace as a souvenir of this impromptu visit; an exquisite Soanean fragment. So who was Mason Chamberlin? Mason Chamberlin the elder (1727-1787), alledgedly a pupil of Francis Hayman, was “a Presbyterian, and a devout man of retired habits”, a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and one of the founders of the Royal Academy. Today his best known oil paintings are of Sir Benjamin Franklin (1762), which can be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a fascinating half-length picture of the surgeon Sir William Hunter (c.1781), notable for being the first to use arterial injection as a means of preserving cadavers, and shows him beside a bronze écorché figure. Incidentally this work was presented to the R.A. by Chamberlin in 1769, probably to mark the appointment of Hunter as Professor of Anatomy at the Academy. Grove's Dictionary of Art damns Chamberlin with faint praise, saying that “he was capable of producing a good likeness but his paintwork was very thin”. However the satirical poet Peter Pindar, real name John Wolcott (1738-1819) was less reticent in the 'Lyric Ode to the Royal Academicians' of 1782, predicting that his stiff figures will eventually be natural “When it shall so please the Lord/To make his people out of board”. Chamberlin's portrait of Franklin, commissioned by Colonel Philip Ludwell III, a rich Virginian living in London, is far from wooden though, and depicts the Promethean inventor in a stock pose, at ease in his study during an evening thunderstorm. Sat beside two bells designed to give a warning when the lightning rod of a house became electrified, the background view through the window is of a generic landscape with an exploding house and toppling steeple. Ever the businessman, these objects are in fact so-called "thunder houses", or "powder houses", toy models in Honduras mahogany made to demonstrating the efficacy of lightning rods, especially the pointed version developed by Franklin. This is the immortal Franklin of The Botanic Garden (1791), Erasmus Darwin’s poem which conflates his scientific and political achievements: “The patriot-flame with quick contagion ran/Hill lighted hill, and man electrised man.” Edward Fisher's 1763 mezzotint of this selfsame portrait was very popular with Franklin at the time, who distributed them to friends and colleagues as one way of cementing his position in the growing pantheon of 18th century science. The prints are inscribed at the base “Sold by Mr.Chamberlin in Stewart Street Old Artillery Ground, Spitalfields 5s”. This image was also copied by François-Nicolas Martinet in 1773 for a print that served as the frontispiece to a French edition of Franklin's writings. In effect the image, of a scholar in situ, has antecedents that stretch back to St.Jerome in his study (c.1390-1441) usually attributed to Jan van Eyck, though Chamberlin's painting also functions as a trade ad intended to sell Franklin's equipment, whilst evoking medieval emblems of apocalypse and the end of the world. The prosaic aspect is reinforced by Franklin's choice of dress, which as in the portrait of him by Scottish painter David Martin (1767) is quite sober and businesslike, still very much the inventor responsible for introducing the terms "battery" "charged" and "electric shock" into the language, rather than the influential politician he was to become. Only in the portrait by Charles Wilson Peale (1785) does he don a magnificent turquoise banyan, a kind of long-sleeved flowing robe often made of wool or heavy damask that connoted wealth and intellectual prowess, very much a symbol of the 'made man', a heroic polymath in the world of enlightenment scholarship. Today luxury 1 & 2 bedroom flats, and a Cali-Mex burrito bar occupy the former Chamberlin site, part of the relentless transformation around Liverpool Street Station, London.

BIBLIOFILE

For the Greek born, London based artist Christina Mitrentse, the activity of drawing is far more than a means of illusory representation. It serves her heterotopic practice as a tool for critical enquiry, for mapping space and ultimately the construction of discrete worlds. In this multiverse fashioned from draughtsmanship, ‘vintage’ artists’ bookmaking, silk-screen prints, sculpture and site-specific installation, drawing functions as a supermetaphor twisting its way through her work, constantly opening up visual possibilities.

This privileging of drawing fits into its wider resurgence, that since the San Francisco punk phenomenon of the 80s, and recent Goldsmithian endorsement, has seen it get a facelift, no longer a mere preparation for something bigger, but in Mitrentse’s case an autonomous art form, hand-held, a powerfully inclusive technique.

The new series of large scale works showcased at Art Work Space in Add To My Library Volume II e.g. ‘Stonehenge’, ‘WWW’, ‘New Tate’, ‘Emblem’ and ‘Ruins I’ all confirm Joseph Beuys’s proposition that drawing is “a special kind of thought”, and in this instance one where historicity is compressed, and its iconic edifices are left hanging. Mitrentse begins and ends with neo-Gothic images of a ruin. a highly charged species of conceptual drawing that avoids visceral gesture, being primarily intended to make the viewer ponder their ‘text’ of civilisation in crisis.

She has also stressed an Interest in how “time can be captured/or represented by just the use of grey scale that comes from pencil and graphite” and reconstructing time through “the imagery of blocks- i.e. heritage, monuments, institutions” etc. What Mitrentse calls “shifting touch” is facilitated through smashing colour pastel into powder, smudginess itself becoming a symbolic overlay of the new, or in this context bibliographic input from international contributors, i.e. artists, writers, curators, museologists, each adding to the construction of an infinite library.

Thus in ‘Stonehenge’ (2010), the iconic example of architectural heritage in the UK, the site is rendered in a non-empirical way, and a manner that causes both nostalgia and alienation. The temenos glows with accumulated knowledge embodied in the book as a source of wisdom. In ‘WWW’ (2010) the űber logo is built up from novels and cutting-edge journalism, a paradoxical statement about the lingering power of the book in the Internet age, while the bibliographic chimney in ‘New Tate’ (2011) is dialectically related to the Skoob towers of renowned British artist John Latham. Mitrentse informs us that “in an attempt to visually interrogate the expressionistic concrete edifice of the new Tate Modern”, after Walter Benjamin she shows that the “picture becomes now a metaphor of digital reproduction over the mechanical, in the repeated form of the Penguin book”.

The reading matter in ‘Ruin I’ (2011) is shown at the point of disintegration. Loosely based on James D. Griffion’s photographs of the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, among other reference points, this decaying information dump signals one possible ‘end’ for the institution. High and low culture cease to differ. Rot rules. History becomes a list of legendary titles, a delirium.

So, for Mitrentse as new data from contributors is gathered, the exercise of adding to and activating her library intensifies, the paper surface a locus not only to remix the ‘catalogue’ but also alter the pictorial space of the library. In this way monumentality is micromanaged. Each drawing might function as domestic ‘shelving’, the traces of an attempted re-drawing of the cultural institution, Tate Modern’s smokeless chimney become a ziggurat of ISBNs.

'Add to My Library: Vol II' , Art Work Space, Lower Ground, The Hempel Hotel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gdns., London W2 3EA; 29 Aug- 25 Sept 2011.

ARTFILE

'The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World', the new show at Tate Britain has all the hallmarks of a blockbuster, but without the need for any hype to prove its credentials. In fact after you have had your ticket torn the initial impact of Jacob Epstein's reconstructed sculpture Rock Drill (1973) is overwhelmingly powerful. It takes up the whole of the first room, its brute magnitude picked out against an entire wall painted synthetic pink, referencing the cover graphics of Wyndham Lewis's Vorticist manifesto BLAST #1 (1914).

EDITORIAL

Despite being incapable of taking the decision in 2007 "to go to the country", Gordon Brown, riding on the back of his back stairs investiture as Prime Minister by Labour Party apparatchiks, and without a popular vote being cast, furthermore being without doubt the loser of the May 2010 election, still had the gall to trot out in front of Number 10 (7 April 2010), equipped with a sturdy lectern, as if the dean of a new university lecturing his students, to announce he was ready to speak to any leader of any party. Maybe Nick Griffin the humiliated leader of the British National Party might be welcome round for a cup of tea, but alas he has nothing to bring to the table. Thus Brown flouts the very system that he now offers to reform in return for Lib Dem support, a bit late in the day one might add; there again what might be politely called a genuine offer in this context is clearly a bribe made by a man with a pathological belief in his own political talent and efficacy. Not dissimilar from Neville Chamberlain, rolled umbrella and all. Brown is ill, delusional and needs to be escorted away by his minders to a place of safety, away from us all, as he has cheated, lost badly and now demands a dog's chance to play another hand of knock-out whist, so desperate is he to carry on as leader. The expenses scandal now looks like very small beer indeed. A rum do indeed. A very rum do.

STOP PRESS: Brown's resignation yesterday (ie 10 April 2010) paved the way for a potential Lab/LibDem pact that would see the Prime Minister extend his tenancy at Number 10 at least till the autumn, his unelected negotiating 'team' of Lords Adonis and Mandelson along with spinmeister Alastair Campbell threatening to take over the reins of power, music hall ventriloquist's of the Brown dummy, or Mugabe is it?

BIBLIOFILE

Even before opening The Form of the Book Book (2010), nay even touching it, by sheer visual impact alone, i.e. a daffodil yellow jacket with red oxide sans serif lettering, it produces a sensation as zingy as a bowl of scrupulously prepared fresh fruit salad.

Then there's the mental double-take caused by that tautological 'book book', which is soon ironed out though by the complete absence of graphic clutter. The letters speak for themselves, and so the reader gets it: this is a book about the nature of books, a meta-book.

Edited by Sarah De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, this collection of seven papers given at The Form of the Book Conference in 2009 at St Bride library, is intended to be a homage to Jan Tschichold's eponymously titled text. In fact, the dust jacket has a generous flap that allows the designers to print in full Tschichold's imperious 'Ten Common Mistakes in the Production of Books'. In effect then the contents must be read as either affirmation or transgression of his lapidary remarks.

The first two contributions focus on representative figures from differing phases of 20th century architectural modernism. Catherine de Smet examines Le Corbusier from the graphic design perspective of his journals and books, stressing the importance of publications such as the series L'Esprit Nouveau or Les Plans de Paris (1922-26) in any reading of his buildings. de Smet calls Le Corbusier's ambivalence towards the new, 'semi-modernity', noting how for instance he revelled in Bauhaus style photomontage and the bleeding full page visual, while also maintaining a stubborn attachment to Antique Baton Allongee an archaic sounding yet sans serif font, even fighting battles with the publisher Gonthier over its use. Set against this though was his love of 'graphie latine' and colour fields, with a refusal to adopt the grid as a matrix to organise information. In the process Le Corbusier actually rejected the Swiss typographical lay out values as propounded by Tschichold, defining himself as more of a pick-and-mix postmodernist than is often thought.

James Goggin's paper looks at a raft of books about the sculptor Gordon Matta-Clark, characterising the design philosophy behind many of these publications as a 'complex', particularly the way that Matta-Clark's 'building cuts' presented an obvious metaphor to exploit. Goggins is well aware of the dangers of pastiche as a way to achieve respectability, and comes down firmly in favour of a hard won balance between content and decoration, sceptical about such flash Harry books as Phaidon's Gordon Matta-Clark (2003) with its exposed spine and coloured thread.

In its three central papers The Form focuses on how the very identity of the book has been at stake since the early 1940s. In Eneqvist, Fruh and Neuenschwander's '1946, 1947, 1948: The Most Beautiful Swiss Books in Retrospect' the authors nominate a group of contemporary typographers, graphic designers, bookshop owners etc to pick their own favourite publications for a best books competition that confabulates the three missing years, a historical hiatus caused by its founder Tschichold's departure for England to work at Penguin. This throws up some magnificent objects, ie Poetes a l'Ecart (1946), a multi-lingual anthology with a Swiss grid cover, a catalogue raisonne Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1948) and the highly recommended Wir Neger in Amerika (1948) with its photogravure images and sans serif typeface providing 'an almost cinematic experience'. The graphic design historian Richard Hollis, who contributes Ways of Seeing Books, also references the era of high modernism, particularly such texts as Graphic Forms (1949), and Books for Our Time (1951). He muses on a perceived technological sclerosis since Gutenberg, citing resistance to typographical/visual change as proof that there has been no wholesale revolution in the format of the book, despite his own best efforts with John Berger's G (1972). Ironically perhaps Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle will trigger off that change in hard copy publishing?

Chrissie Charlton's 'Working with Herbert Spencer: A Pioneer of Modern Typography' sees The Form revert to a more biographical mode. Charlton's memoir is the product of her time spent as Spencer's assistant in the 1970s, involving anything from pasting up galley proofs with cow gum to preparing images using Letraset. Spencer himself emerges as a fairly laid back yet utterly scrupulous designer, with a very strong track record in catalogues and handbooks.

The two remaining papers examine the stakes surrounding the identity of the book. Sarah Gottlieb's 'A Conversation with Bob Stein from the Institute for the Future of the Book', teases out several important issues about the shift from the printed page to the networked screen, unbound by space or time. Stein is utopian in a practical way, remarking that 'a book is a place where readers and writers can congregate', uncertain where the boundaries lay between cahier and blog, yet certain that work is Joycean in so far as it is always in progress. For him the digital age needs its own set of tools and enlightened protocols, that If:book is attempting to underwrite as we speak. 'Every Book Starts with an Idea: Notes for Designers' by Armand Mevis is pedagogic too, a sort of q & a session about book design, treating the 'shape of content' as a heuristic business, often requiring slash and burn before successful typo(-graphic) formulas are reached, the physical elements of a publication telling the story of its construction, a journey through a garden of forked paths.

ARTFILE

"All formats are in disarray"

David Toop, Theatres Trust, 22 Charing Cross Rd., London; 11 Feb 2010.