Art History Lesson - St. Ives Colony

Christopher Wood - known as Kit Wood. He had left his home for Paris with desires of being the greatest artist the world had ever known. However, Diaghilev rejected the commission for the ballet Russe. Kit was in no mind to adjust. And so, with a heavy addiction to opium he returned to the UK. He met and befriended Ben Nicholson and they travelled to St. Ives to paint. 
Sadly he died aged 29. He jumped under a train and was killed. He was paranoid and mentally becoming quite unwell. His addiction to opium had escalated and no doubt contributed enormously to his mental instability.
He moved to St. Ives when a commission in Paris was not liked and he was in no mind to adjust his work. In St. Ives he met with Ben Nicholson.

 
In his time, no doubt this paintings were truly avant-garde. A move away from painting literally and a step towards suggestion. A flatness with depth. I have no idea how to describe that better.

Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. They met and started a passionate affair, eventually marrying. They had triplets and as a result of the bombings in London moved to the safety of St. Ives. Later Ben had an affair claiming Barbara was only interested in her sculptures. It's so saddening that something apparently so passionate ended in such heart ache. She looked up to him greatly still apparently despite how badly he treated her.



Everything is so light. I learnt that his final studio was in fact bright white light. A stark whiteness.

I was thrilled by the description of this piece by Barbara. According to the art historian Dr James Fox, Barbara was accused of being abstract. But she said she had captured the bay of St. Ives. The shape has been curled around. The white represents the beach and the lines are the waves as they roll in. I think it's stunning. I want it of course. At least I would like to see it at some time.
She was commissioned to sculpt for John Lewis in London


Inspired by the standing stones in the area and to be found all over Devon and Cornwall. She remained in St. Ive and sadly died in a fire at her studio. Previously, she had been creating larger and larger sculptures. Her work was in demand. An unusual achievement really for a female to succeed as a sculptress. Considering her delicate look, there she was chipping away in a very demanding art form. She had assistants actually but if anyone visited they had to hide away.

Ben and Kit had discovered the prolific painter Alfred Wallis. I love that he was painting on anything he could find, bits of cardboard, drift wood etc etc.
He died in very lonely conditions. Such a pity. He was never taught to paint and his style was unusual at the times. He was to influenced by any academic points of view. He was painting without perspective. What he said was that he was painting as he remembered things. It seems sad he was having to deal with the loss through change via his art. I wonder if he was stuck?
 

The very tiny house is apparently meant to be his brothers house. They had fallen out so he took out his anger through his painting. How funny!




At one point during the Second World War, Piet Mondrian joined the St. Ives gang. Now this is interesting because when Barbara and Ben were leaving London, they bumped into Piet, they had beckoned to Piet to jump in the car and go with them. He refused, not liking the countryside.





Fleeing from Russia, Naum Gabo joined the accumulating group of artists. He struggled to acquire the artistic provisions he wanted. However he managed to persuade ICI to allow him to trial various new plastic they were experimenting with.
 So delicate. The shapes he said were inspired by everything around him in St. Ives - shells, rocks, coves, the sea ad so on.

  At the end of the war he left for New York.

Terry Frost returned from the war and wanted to get far away from his home. So St. Ives was suggested as a bohemian centre. It was supposedly rivalling Paris at this time.





His son Anthony Frost is also an artist.
I didn't like these quite as much.

Peter Lanyon arrived ....
He wanted to get close to the feel of the place. He ran up hills to be caught by surprise by the view. He lay beneath the sky. He got wet getting close to the sea. He stood on the edge of the cliffs and climbed rocks. Eventually he got his solo pilots licence and glided over the countryside of St. Ives. All influencing his works.
Sadly his glider crashed and as a result of the injuries he died 4 days later.


Art critic Patrick Heron put down the pen and picked up the brushes. A good friend of Lanyon's.He lived up on a the cliffs. A harsh area to live and endure the elements at their roughest.
His work was influenced by the views from the windows of his house and also doors influenced him.


He also took great pleasure in putting colours on colours. He found the painting of the last bit of white where a new colour met another precious on painted exhilarating

A very interesting art history lesson.
Now I would like to venture down there and visit the Tate St. Ives and also Hepworths gallery.
Yes I will see if there is a way to get there and maybe camp locally.

Bliss
XX

A little bit of grrrrrr - hahahahahahahaha

Becoming more self aware is a joy to behodl.
I sent an email to a friend eariler today owning that I hadbeen completely wrong about something I was adamant I knew to be right. I checked it out as a seed of doubt was implanted at the time and discovered of course that I was wrong. Embarrassing to me but hey! In my head I am thinking I am always so certain about things and this is just one of many thigns that actually I am often wrong about. A lesson to be learnt about being less adamant and more enquiring but also cutting myself a slack because I do make mistakes sometimes and that's OK. Attitude is something I think I can learn to adjust.
LIke I use in my opinion about things I like and dislike - a revelation in being able to own my opinion - I can also say I think or do you know .....?
Anyway I received an email that aroused a grrrrrr in me. The reply said that my friend hadn;t believed me anyway at the time and blah blah blah. I interpreted by this she thought my email was to impart correct information and that she would have been silly enough to believe me. I did not think that at all. I have a feeling she has a big issue about being taken in and defends against that. This is not the grrr - it's the seemingly misunderstood purpose of my email. But what I have realised the level of grrr I have is actually a layer over the embarrassment I feel. It would not even be a grrrrrrrrr more of an irritation that she seems to have misunderstood my intention.
Anyway I laughed at myself when I stoped to think it all through. I have no need to continue the communication. I can actually truly let it go. There is often this jibe from her and many many times I let it go with no need to explain further. I am not sure if that's rught or wrong to do. Does it mean that the full communciation channels are not open - or is it simply that there is no need to anallyse further.
As I own my embarrassment about the knowledge bit I can laugh more at myself. And ask for help in altering the way I present myself. I do no ever want to appear arrogant or egotistical as I do find it distasteful in others. I think I would just like to practice being more enquiring instead.

So whilst I needed to keep a record of this as otherwise I forget it seems the littel lessons I get along my path, it was also a grand deviation from the essay I am attempting to draft.

 

“...the straightforward account of classical conditioning ... is quite easy to explain on the basis of simple changes in synapses” Describe the simple changes and discuss the extent to which all forms of learning can be explained by these simple synaptic changes.

The thing is the information in the books puts it so succinctly it seems silly to re-write it in my own words - tee heeeeeee hahahahahaha. It's ONLY a 1000 words. And then I have loads of reading to do on a subject that should interest me greatly - addiction. And a brief essay and some questions.
So useful this course in understanding the very basics of what is occurring in the brain and body as we go ab out being human.
Amazing. Utterly amazing.

Bliss
XX

X-Men born 1963 - the 60's influences

The 1960s spawned innumerable new social, political and religious movements.  After the austerity of the post-Second World War period there was an economic boom in the West.  The decade opened as South Africa left the Commonwealth with the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, giving his famous 'Winds of Change' speech in which he argued for a 'partnership of races' in that continent, and for inclusion of all in political and economic power.   However , the struggle against apartheid and brutal white supremacist regimes was not to be complete until almost three decades later.  In 1962 the USA became very nervous about the fact that the Soviet Union was building medium range missile sites in Cuba with strike capability on the USA.  After supporting an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro, the US blockaded Cuba.    Despite the exhortation of his chiefs-of-staff to use nuclear weapons to end the confrontation, President John F. Kennedy insisted on negotiation and averted what could have been the first (and probably last) nuclear war.  In 1964 in Great Britain the Conservatives lost the general election and Harold Wilson became the first Labour prime minister since 1951.  The United States became involved in a war in Vietnam, supporting a series of Saigon-based governments against rebels who appeared to have backing from Communist China and/or the Soviet Union. The US poured in resources, including up to 500.000 troops in the country at any one time.   This war was one of the first in which a civilian population was attacked as much as the forces against whom was undertaken.  The use of chemical weapons such as napalm (a jelly-like chemical flammable substance dropped from the air) and Agent Orange (a herbicide) did vast and terrible damage to the country, its people and the food systems that supported them.  A huge popular protest movement in both the US and across Europe developed against the war.  The ethic of rebellion and questioning of the traditional status quo fuelled the development of protest and alternative cultural, arts and religious movements too.   These movements included the Pop Art movement, modernism and minimalism in art and architecture, the rock, soul and motown movements in music, and transcendental meditation, many cults of various kinds and the alternative lifestyle called 'hippy'.  The idea that individuals should explore their own inner psyches and develop spiritually was also connected to particular drug cultures, where drugs like LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) were purported to produce the same self-knowledge and awareness as meditation and religious experience did.  The chief proponent was an American psychologist Timothy Leary, who famously exhorted his followers to 'Turn on, tune in, drop out'.   This decade spawned relaxation of dress codes and liberalisation of sexual behaviour, enabled by the development of a contraceptive pill, which enabled women for the first time in history to control their fertility.  Despite the apparent tremendous optimism and energy with the decade opened, it closed more sombrely with the promise of wars and destruction becoming ubiquitous.  The Vietnam war continued with thousands dead and opposed by violent demonstrations across the US and Europe; the six-day Arab-Israeli war occurred in 1967; in 1968 Martin Luther King, a US black rights activist was assassinated and Enoch Powell in the UK gave his notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech opposing immigration; in 1968 also the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia after its liberal leader Alexander Dubcek had introduced the 'Prague Spring' of liberal reforms; in response to sectarian conflict over civil rights in 1969 British troops began to patrol the streets of Northern Ireland.  The continuing sectarian conflict and its consequence became know as the 'Troubles', and has continued into the new century;  in 1969 the there was a very severe famine amongst the Biafran people of Nigeria.  For the first time television began to bring the acute suffering of people of the developing world into the living rooms of every industrialised nation.

Bliss
XX

Where did all the anger go?

Baby souls follow.
Young souls lead.
But old souls, Bliss, are happy to dance alone.
Not that I'm spying on you,
    The Universe

I am not sure what I think about this comment from The Universe. I write The Universe because it's really a money making enterprise that I am hooked up to and receive these little daily messages. They are at times incredibly inspirational.
There is something about young and old souls. Of course no one really knows. But I do get a sense of a difference. I have always hated the idea that I might be a new or young soul. It seems cooler somehow to be an old soul. And that in itself makes me smile and the child in me. Never ever happy just where I am right now. Always wanting something else. I do wonder what this unrest in me is all about? I think it has been with me from a very young earth age. Everything else that I haven't got or done or everywhere else that I haven't been or am not right at this moment or everyone else is better. This can be time and space - spatial and ???? what is the word. Oh I do get fed up with the menopausal memory blocks. Which also makes me smile because I have always had this gappy memory. Spatial and ........ in social psychology the two were used a lot. In biological psychology it's temporal but somehow the word doesn't seem quite right for the fact that temporally I am never happy with the now.
For this now moment I am grateful for the mean to be able to type out my thoughts. And I am grateful for the desire to be literally creative by getting down my thinking. In the here and now I am grateful for a desire to eat healthier. Oh I need to be grateful for something in the past - yesterday talking with the one of the housekeepers at work. Wow gran words we use for cleaner. Isn't it funny how we use words and over time they become politically incorrect because humans attach meaning to the words that someone else doesn't like. Anyway the cleaner or housekeeper (which in time will have some derogatory meaning and will be re-named) and I were talking somehow about over eating. I was talking with an addictions therapist head on as she asked me my opinion on hypnosis as a means to overcome smoking and over eating. I was brilliant I thought ha ha! I was talking about how well it can work but not in isolation. I explained that I thought hypnosis can temporarily seem to alter the conditioning that I believe is a part of "addictive" behaviours. Such as when we are children and crying quite often parents use sweet things to pacify or soothe. And so, as with Pavlov's dog, the ways in which synapses alter in the brain with the pairing of food and attention becomes learnt, the hypnosis might temporarily put some control over this. However, hypnosis doesn't deal with the emotional reactions to everyday life. Therefore unless these are addressed, the hypnosis never seems to have a long lasting affect in altering the learnt behaviour. It is apparent for instance that smoking is a great suppressant for anger. So whilst hypnosis has removed the desire to smoke using all sorts of clever alarms - maybe even implanted memories - it hasn't removed anger. Thank goodness as anger is a valid and necessary emotion. I loved the lecture I gave yesterday on becoming aware of anger as a trigger to relapse.  Anyway stop bragging. The anger rises as a result of life and this is more powerful than the hypnosis and so the addict returns to smoking to manage the anger.
I just have to say that I heard a while ago that the gift of anger is energy. And this tied nicely with something I heard years ago and held onto that emotion is energy in motion e-motion. Loved it. So this two together make total sense. The difficulty is learning to separate the emotion from the behaviour and start identifying the variations of anger and choose to behave differently - not to get rid of the anger but to use the energy in a healthier way. Where on earth am I going with all of this. Oh yes the cleaner/housekeeper and over eating. So as I was explaining my theory she spoke about being out with friends who were all eating things she wanted so in the end she gave in and put down her less fattening foods and succumbed to eating the things she wanted so much like her friends. I said that with alcohol or drugs we tell people that in early days they need to avoid alcohol and drugs. To get some strength in their recovery rather than put themselves at the risk of temptation. When feeling OK it's no problem but if unaware of emotions bubbling underneath relapse is much more likely. And then I said it's a matter of acceptance that we cannot eat like other people just like the alcoholic has to accept that they cannot drink like other people. Despite having said this over and over for 10 years or so and applied it to myself with substances including nicotine, it was like a thunderbolt of revelation, like I had never heard it before .... amazing. I just need to accept that I cannot eat like others. That for some reason I have an addiction to sugary foods. I think white flour in this country doesn't help either. White flour is less refined in places like France and so the bread etc is very different.
I just need to accept that I cannot touch those things. And as much as I want want want them I need to stay off them. Alcohol and drugs were easy compared to this..... smoking was difficult enough but I used sugar. When I hear people talking about just being able to have anything but needing to manage it - well this is like telling an alcoholic to control their drinking. It rarely if ever works out.
So I need to apply the same to my food. I have tried all sorts of ways to be able to allow myself sweet things. Chocolate and sweets and cakes and so on. If M sticks with the Dukan diet she too will have a maintenance programme that is for life. I feel jealous immediately of people that can have ..... and it seems to me that others won;t understand it or take it seriously. And this is just how the folk in our treatment think. They go through doubts and fear. Ugh the shame of telling people that I may have got it wring and actually I cannot have. But even worse the disbelief in me that I will be able to stick to it so already building up the case for when I relapse. Actually I hope I can hold onto this as I can relate it so well with people in the group. I know myself the similarity in the thinking when deciding to give things up. There is such a negotiation in my head. And if I can be honest about it then I can get the support.
So for today I will not have sugar. I will be stressed at times as I am starting essay 1 - funnily enough much to do with learning and memory and the Hebbian learning of changes at the synapse.
How interesting how much more I know as a result of my course that helps with every day things. I didn't know it would be so useful. My problem is explaining things clearly and usefully.

Man! How I wonder off topic. That's going with the flow of the thinking. All the little electic sparks firing off and awakening different pockets of information. One day they may discover where the store of information is beause right now there is no knowledge of hos the electricity becomes conscious thoughts and memories. Amazing humans!!
So as for baby, young and old souls. In my opinion there is something in this. However, I do think different life circumstances can awaken the old soul.
With a more direct reference to what is being siad about the baby, young and old soul, yes I see that with wisdom there is less need to be with a someone. I still would like to meet a someone to share with. I am wondering if the longing is more prevalent when I am lower in mood. When everything seems so bleak and lonely and pointless. And that is possibly where the addictive element gets triggered. The desire and "need". When I am feeling uplifted and skipping along my path, the need is less. I can think more freely just how people come and go. Friends, partners and acquaintances. I meet an array of personalities that contribute greatly to the moments a long the way. Some stay and some are momentary. And I am at ease with that so long as my mood isn't in the pits and my path looks narrow with barbed wire fencing lining the route, dead animals rotting on the barbs, trees over hanging blotting out any sunlight, unfirm ground and in places bogs to navigate, empty of people, silent of life, no one and nothing ahead just more of the same. Still that's improvement on the tiny black sealed box I used to be in at my lowest.
Now the same path has fileds either side, stretching to hills or sea, forests. The path is windy and beyond each corner there is something that looks interesting to explore. There is sunlight and moonlight, there are people criss-crossing the path. Unicorns and faeries. So so so many things of interest that there isn't enough time in my life to pursue them all. So suddenly who needs one person.
Does this mean that I have an old soul? If so what happens to the old soul when the bleak blackness descends? Who knows? Nobody really knows. Do we need to know? Only when we are looking for certainty. Trust is the response to fear rather than certainty and control.
For today I trust. Lovely.

Bliss
XX