Author Archives: Robin

About Robin

Occasional painter. Golfer. Fascinated by humanity. Passionate about beautiful stuff, the people who create it and its narrative.

#alyaakamel

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Ayaa Kamel 1

I open my Facebook homepage. I see a bundle of red wool pulled into a heart shape. Amid the thousands of photos that I come across each day via the internet, this stands out. It has a simple and naïve charm. It is posted by Alyaa Kamel, the queen of that corner of cyberspace where “art” and social media blur into one. The text of the post reads: #Iloveme #love #heart #loveisnow #lovingmyself #process #evolution #respect #act #say #talk #think #arttherapy #life #world #humanity #contemporaryart #design #myart #wool #paper #alyaakamel (Interesting!)

Ayaa Kamel 2

I head into Geneva’s old town and visit this striking and versatile painter in her studio. I am immediately captivated by an inky dervish-like figure, beautifully proportioned, poised and slightly stooped as if resting between manic whirls. However, my objective today is neither to admire nor to buy. I am after a behind-the-scenes-and-screens glimpse of Alyaa’s virtual gallery. We chat. I ask her about her unrelenting Facebook activity that could stretch to ten posts per day. She’s a little elusive. She says it’s about promoting and selling her work. I am not totally convinced. It is the “why” of so much activity that fascinates and that I really want to explore. There must be other incentives and impulses at play. I struggle to pitch the right question.

Ayaa Kamel 3

Of all the images that Alyaa posts, her people fascinate the most. Who they are is unclear. They are frequently hooded or veiled. They are oppressed people; people in ruins; displaced people; poor people; crowded people; and people in distress. They are, in brief, a kind of faceless generic for those people about whom every day world news is made. She just feels for people caught up in events over which they have no control and she pours it all out on Facebook.

Ayaa Kamel 4

Alyaa travels far and wide often in the company of Martin La Roche. Their clothes, their parties, their dinners and hotel rooms are all posted on their profile pages. Amid all this, she also executes and posts exquisite little sketches. Leafing through her (paper) sketchbook is a pleasure and a privilege. Take a look at this hotel in Stockholm!

Ayaa Kamel 5

The most intriguing theme that Alyaa Kamel posts by the day – and the most revealing – is Little Alyaa. This pre-adolescent feminine persona expresses any and every little girl thought or emotion that might flit through the mind of an adult in a moment of regression. A cloth version travels in Alyaa’s handbag and does cameo photo-calls wherever her creater takes her. Little Alyaa rattles my sense of macho. I feel manipulated and irritated by her. I wish I could say I had absolutely no interest in her o-so-cute-girlie-on-valentine-card-addressed-to-self sentiments. But I can’t resist the pull of her charm, the more so with following her on Facebook. I come to realise that Little Alyaa is a very articulate little miss. She is brilliantly characterised and presented. She has, inevitably, a huge, and not entirely female, following. Just as Alyaa Kamel’s people speak of world events, Little Alyaa speaks to Big Alyaa’s friends and admirers. And just to tighten the saccharine screws, Little Alyaa sometimes shares a Facebook post with a teddy bear. The text is more revealing still….. ‪#‎givemebackmylife‬ ‪#‎life‬ ‪#‎teddyismine‬ ‪#‎teddybear‬ ‪#‎IamwhoIam‬ ‪#‎identity‬ ‪#‎innocence‬ ‪#‎childhood‬ ‪#‎mylife‬ ‪#‎live‬ ‪#‎alive‬ ‪#‎art‬ ‪#‎alyaakamel‬ ‪#‎contemporaryart‬ ‪#‎design‬ ‪#‎decoration‬ ‪#‎illustration‬ ‪#‎drawing‬ ‪#‎fineart‬

I admire Alyaa’s eclectic work and enjoy her unrelenting use of Facebook. However, her hashtag word clouds represent much more than a strategy of promotion and sales. They serve to bare her soul and simultaneously act as gaping virtual look-at-me dragnets that communicate with and capture a wide variety of other emotional and creative fish. But the question of “why” remains. A generous answer is that this behaviour signals a talented painter of the twenty-first century using social media unashamedly to promote her work by expressing her fears, hopes, longings and aspirations to as wide an audience as possible. A less generous answer is that she has a compulsion to put herself “out there” on social media. Perhaps the real answer lies somewhere in between. My attempt at analysis of Alyaa Kamel’s Facebook activity stops here. I just love it. #hugrobin #robinneedsabeer

Another Place… near Liverpool

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Another Place 1

Liverpool is a great place to visit. I love its strong sense of civic pride. In a previous era, this vibrant city on the north-west coast of England was a giant hub for shipping and global trade. Now, it’s more famous for two football teams and the Beatles. I have an hour or two to spare and head for Crosby sands on the Mersey estuary. I am going to Another Place… for the second time.

Another Place 2

Antony Gormley‘s “Another Place” is one of the UK’s most famous and recognisable public sculptures. It even has its own visitor’s parking! When I arrive, the tide is out. From the concrete sea-wall I survey the miles of open sand-flats on which stand widely spaced upright human figures. They are still, vigilant and uniformly determined. Some are way out on the water’s edge. They all stare defiantly out to the horizon. Another Place comprises one hundred life-size iron figures each of which weighs 650kg and is cast from a mould of Gormley’s own naked body. It is impossible to capture it’s beauty, scope and genius in one photograph.

Another Place 3

The Iron Men – as they are called around here – make sure the ships reach port safely.

Another Place 4

Those furthest out on the flats watch the turbines turn on the Crosby wind farm. As the tide comes in, the waves break over and then submerge these hardy sentinels.

Sir Antony Gormley was born in Yorkshire in 1950. He came from a privileged background being educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He went on to study fine arts at St. Martins and the Slade in London. His sparkling but unconventional career in sculpture and theatre set-design has brought him awards, prizes, fellowships and honours galore. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014 for services to the arts. Quite some guy!

The Iron Men were constructed in 1997. Before coming to Crosby in 2005, they had spent time on beaches in Germany, Belgium and Denmark. In 2007, a controversial decision by the local council ensured that Another Place has a permanent home here.

Another Place 5

I first visited Another Place in 2009 when this photo was taken. The January wind chilled to the bone. The tide was not far out. At an individual level, the Iron Men did not really inspire. Some were waist deep in water. Some, with only their heads above the waves, looked like brave winter swimmers. They held no promise of reflection or emotion. I did not stay long. If I am honest, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I felt only a flicker of curiosity but, fortunately, enough to ensure my return.

Another Place 6

Now, in 2015, I see only staggering originality. When describing Another Place, Gormley says: “In this work, human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body; no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet.” I wonder if his notion of time, reinforced through the local council’s decision about the Iron Men’s permanence, would allow him to predict that these figures not only confront and battle the elements but also become their own little sea-side eco-systems.

Another Place 7

The further out to sea the Iron Men are, the more encrusted with barnacles, mussels and sea-weed they become. They are no longer industrial reproductions of their creator; each has developed its own tidal personality.

Another Place 8

So much for the “who,” the “what,” the “when,” the “where,” and the “how” of the Talking Beautiful Stuff formula; but what about the “… and what does it mean for me?” Curiosity took me back to see Another Place. The conditions were different the second time. I found something that is not only beautiful in its totality but also something hugely admirable both in its concept and in the civic broad-mindedness that makes such an installation possible. Above all, I found the experience of strolling over Crosby sands from one from Iron Man to another totally uplifting.

Another Place 9

If you visit Liverpool, do not go to Another Place just because you have an hour or two to spare. Make an hour or two to go to Another Place.

Is this beautiful?

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Accelerator 1

Talking Beautiful Stuff has written about how an object’s beauty may be derived directly from its function. “That’s a really beautiful car!” “What a fabulous knife!” In other words, one thing we take into account when considering the aesthetic appeal of a particular output of the human creative spirit is what the object in question does. Yesterday, I came across this stunning construction on display in a theme park. I just stopped and stared in fascination. I had no idea what it was but I found it intriguing, intimidating and, yes, beautiful. Could it be – and I can hardly bring myself to say the word – “art”?

So, what do you think? Is it:

  • a prop from a 1960’s sci-fi film?
  • the winner of the Steampunk Festival 2014?
  • a work by a major contemporary metallic sculptor entitled “Devoid of humanity (with head) VII”?
  • a particle accelerator from the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN)?

While you consider these options, take a look at the gorgeous, burnished and exquisitely crafted copper exterior. It hasn’t dulled with exposure to the wind and rain.

Accelerator 2

The answer: this is one of the original particle accelerators built at CERN in 1983. It and 127 others like it (limited edition!) were placed around the famous 27km circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border. The acceleration around the tunnel of both electrons and positrons up to the speed of light was achieved by making them “surf” on electromagnetic waves of 352 MHz. A physicist friend tells me with great enthusiasm that the cylindrical lower part of each accelerator generated the waves whilst the spherical upper part served as a heat-reducing microwave energy store. I nod politely.

Accelerator 3

Photocopyright: CERN 1983

Here it is! With all the bells and whistles all wired up and ready for work!

Isn’t this fabulous? The designers cannot have given thought to the aesthetic appeal of a particle accelerator. This must be design for function only. This is the technical stuff of pure science. This is one hound in the hunt for Higg’s Boson. This is the sort of thing commemorated by the work of Gayle Hermick. But an aesthetic appeal it definitely does have even though I – like most others – have little comprehension of its function and will never see it actually working. However, it stopped me in my tracks and when I told my physicist friend that I wanted to photograph one of the objects  in CERN’s Léon Van Hove Square, he immediately knew which one it would be.

Accelerator 4

Another object on display in the Square and only 30 metres from the accelerator is an electrical staircase that multiplies the voltage of a transformer. Invented in 1932 in Cambridge (UK), this was used to generate the required 500,000 volts for particle acceleration. It’s looks really whacky and has the sci-fi look but, somehow, it just isn’t …. well…. beautiful.

Does my lifetime exposure to wondrous contemporary sculptures, old sci-fi films, steampunk and the world of Heath Robinson ultimately influence whether I perceive an object such as the particle accelerator as beautiful? Am I influenced because the object is part of the glamour of this cutting edge of science? Why is it easily imaginable that this really is a work by a major contemporary sculptor? If it was put up for sale and CERN asked the price of $1million, does this make it “art”?