Last week, on November 11th 2024, the world lost Frank Auerbach, one of the greatest figurative painters of our time. He was 93. Auerbach arrived in Britain as a child, sent by his parents in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport  scheme. His parents were later murdered at Auschwitz. Frank Auerbach's rich life of art and experience took in teaching posts at secondary schools and art colleges in his early years. He ascended to become one of the leading figures of the 'School of London', alongside illustrious colleagues such as Howard Hodgkin, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, and he helped launch the careers of many next-generation British artists including Jenny Saville and Cecily Brown. Auerbach settled in the artistic hub of Camden in North London. Best-known for his compelling, searching portraits, often existing in multiple renderings of the same sitter, Auerbach's work ranges from profound charcoal drawings displaying a potent combination of contemplative stasis and flurried energy, to craggy, expressionist oil studies in the thickest of impasto. During the 1950's Auerbach produced many charcoal drawings of Stella West, the actress with whom he maintained a long and intense relationship. The artist has stated that none of his portraits exhibit a greater intensity that those he made of Stella, because the connection between them was so powerful. He described the atmosphere in the studio with Stella (known as E.O.W) as one in which clouds of charcoal dust hung chokingly in the room as he knelt on the floor, a drawing board balanced on a chair in front of him. He was perpetually frightened that Stella would refuse to sit any longer; on occasions, the artist would pretend a finished drawing was incomplete and secretly begin a new one, seeking to capitalise on the stolen moments before Stella, ultimately, did rebel, forcing Auerbach to turn to paint. It seems that Frank Auerbach had a deep-seated fear of sitters abandoning the studio. “Sloshing around with paints”,  he said, “may make the sitter feel that the whole process is so idiotic and unreadable and messy, and that they might lose faith in the procedure”. Auerbach's style is arguably among the most iconic and recognisable of our time. Let us leave the last word to David Bowie, who owned the portrait of Gerda Boehm illustrated above: “ My God – I want to sound like that painting looks!” CHARCOAL DUST AND IMPASTO PEAKS copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

In 1983 I graduated from Reading University, necessitating a return to the prison of my family home. Subversion was impossible. Any attempt to avoid toeing the line meant suffering for my mother, at the hands of my father. One day, I will write and publish my autobiography. It may not make easy reading. Quasi-subversion was expressed by me gingerly, by proxy and in a diluted form. I aligned secretly with music, art and poetry of a type of which which my father disapproved and forbade in the home. I became obsessed with Herman Hesse's NARZISS UND GOLDMUND and with Zola's LA FAUTE DE L'ABBÉ MOURET; both remain favourite novels of mine to this day and both deal with themes of incarceration and rebellion. A university friend of mine had gone on, after Reading, to study for her PGCE at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She was a lifeline to me, helping me to stay relatively sane and adjusted, during the difficult times when my father clasped me back to his narcissistic bosom and attempted to clone me – metaphorically, but only slightly so – in his image. I regularly visited my friend in her University halls, on which occasions she introduced me to the Sainsbury Centre, an art gallery and museum in the University grounds off the Earlham Road in Norwich. https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/ My friend's guiding of me towards this incredible seat of artistic concentration was a baptism, not of fire, but of sweetest milk; of the headiest and most intoxicating experience. At The Sainsbury Centre I discovered so much of the art that I now revere, including sculptures by Elisabeth Frink, sculptures and paintings by Modigliani, drawings and sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and, most persuasively and indelibly, paintings by Francis Bacon. Over the past few days, I have been visiting my recently bereaved sister who lives in Norwich. I took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the Sainsbury Centre for the first time in nine years since we both attended the incredible exhibition FRANCIS BACON AND THE MASTERS there in the summer of 2015. https://www.francis-bacon.com/bacons-world/exhibitions/francis-bacon-and-masters Regular readers of this column will know of my confused, push-pulled artistic background, to say nothing of of the wider spectrum of my tainted upbringing. My mother, the artist in the family, was more Renoir than Bacon and I suspect that she found the latter's work a little degenerate. In contrast to my father however, she always respected my taste and opinion and when I came back home from Norwich raving about Francis Bacon, she was a fount of encouragement and positivity. The Sainsbury Centre is a vast metal and glass structure, designed by Norman Foster – the architect of the stunning Viaduc de Millau https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/millau-viaduct – which is my corridor of passage when I visit my beloved South of France by car. In itself, the Sainsbury Centre from the outside carries a delicate simplicity, as functional as it is massively, airily beautiful. The bulk of the Sainsbury constitutes a single, vast room – warm, tranquil, offering a hum of hushed conversation and, this week, a small video installation playing contemplative music on loop. For someone who is, like me, mildly claustrophobic and shuns crowds, no gallery space could be more ideal. As I walk around, I catch myself sighing in private ecstasy. When I first started, at the Sainsbury Centre forty years ago, to drink in the glorious marks that Francis Bacon made upon his canvases, the reaction inside me was visceral, and it continues to be so. One of the benefits of the Sainsbury is the superb lighting that makes close examination of Bacon's mark-making so possible, turning it into a compulsion for me. My world changed when I discovered with my own eyes the way in which Bacon pressed a rag into his paint, leaving its imprint, or screwed and twisted a brush in the paint 'alla prima' to create that familiar distorted, deconstructed muzzle in many of his faces, a twisted non-reality that the artist believed transcended figurative accuracy in its representational truth. This iconic technique is visible in the detail of TWO FIGURES IN A ROOM above, and also in the images below. I visit the Sainsbury Centre rarely; I always prefer to save the most precious experiences for the right moment, to enjoy in sparing and rationed ecstasy. This week, I nearly went back the following morning, but resisted the temptation. What is special and shining in its beauty needs savouring as a rare jewel, and none too often. What I did do, rejoicingly, was visit FRANCIS BACON:HUMAN PRESENCE in London the very next day! https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/francis-bacon-portraits This is an overwhelming exhibition. Go and see it. For me, the smaller portraits in the collection make the greatest impact. Tender, intimate in their searing honesty, they show us a less familiar Bacon than that of the vast canvases bearing troubled figures, sometimes seated as if in an electric chair, sometimes writhing in sexual combat or in existential anguish, incarcerated by a silvery cage. These small pieces are probing, sad, loving, profound, and probing. What is it about Francis Bacon? He spoke of humans 'living through screens' and that “I sometimes think, when people say my work looks violent, that perhaps I have from time to time been able to clear away one or two of the veils or screens.” I particularly like it that, while many of us artists like to speak of a disconnection from the self when we paint, that 'It Paints' - as I do believe is a real, though scarce occurrence https://www.artfullyabstractedblog.com/post/it-paints , Bacon presents a refreshingly candid standpoint. “ I think art is an obsession with life and, after all, as we are human beings our greatest obsession is with ourselves.” WHERE IT ALL BEGAN Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

Just a quick 'touch-base' today. For those of you who do not yet know, at Lambdens Brasserie-Gallery in Woburn, Bedfordshire, there is a room entirely given over to my paintings; THE HAYDN ROOM. Lambdens is quite new, so they do not yet have a website, but if you look here https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0LMsuKEoqzzY1YLRSNagwsTA3MzU2NTU0Mk5LMU01tjKoSDFNMUs1MzI3NrA0BJLmXkI5iblJKal5xQr5aQrl-UmlRXkABDQVmA&q=lambdens+of+woburn&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB976GB976&oq=lambdens&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqFQgBEC4YJxivARjHARiABBiKBRiOBTISCAAQABgUGIcCGOMCGIAEGJ8EMhUIARAuGCcYrwEYxwEYgAQYigUYjgUyCQgCEEUYORiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIQCAUQLhivARjHARiABBiOBTIHCAYQABiABDIKCAcQABiABBiiBDIKCAgQABiABBiiBDIKCAkQABiABBiiBNIBCTYxMDVqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 at the panel on the right hand side, the first image illustrates THE HAYDN ROOM. The room has recently had a reshuffle, with several new pieces being added. A big publicity drive is imminent, and of course the best mode of action is to get on down to Lambdens to see the collection and select your purchase. It's worth noting that most of the collection now consists of framed paintings. Please drop me a message here, or even better, use the contact form at my exclusive representatives https://www.iologies.com/contact , for further information. Watch this space for more art history and art criticism features, and more! HAYDN ROOM - RESHUFFLE Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

“ The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes”. (André Gide) I studied a Gide text for my French 'A' Level – 'La Porte Etroite' and, though I am no Catholic and find the notion of Alissa's “sacrifice” in the novel more than mildly abhorrent in humanistic terms, I have always adored the musical, rarified poetry of Gide's prose. As students, while we were studying La Porte Etroite, we visited a neighbouring school at which my friend's mother taught French and had access to a wonderful film “Avec André Gide” which we duly watched; a film on which I would fervently like to get my hands. (To anyone how knows where I might find it, answers on a 'virtual postcard' please!) In the film, I remember Gide's delicately chiselled, ascetic visage and, especially, a scene in which the multi-faceted artistic intellectual was (surprisingly to me at the time) teaching piano, coaching a student in the first of Fryderyk Chopin's Scherzi. I was fascinated by the detail he was encouraging and obtaining from his student in this highly complex and virtuosic piece, at an extremely slow and analytical tempo. I often draw inspiration from this episode in my own teaching of advanced classical piano. I digress. Much as I would love to watch this film right now, it is with the statement at the head of today's article that I wish to settle, for today's thoughts. It seems that we are discouraged from employing such words as 'madness' today. The label has acquired a pejorative, judgemental, dismissive or demeaning inference. We must, it seems, tiptoe around certain words and appellations that might denigrate or tarnish, albeit unwittingly, a state of being that should rather be celebrated than hush-hushed under the carpet, one that should evoke a sense of sun rather than of cloud. Neurodivergence frequently nestles at the very heart of creative fecundity. I would venture to suggest that fulfilment of artistic 'Parnassus' is seldom achieved by those for whom existence is devoid of emotional and/or psychological extremes. I am invariably greeted with raised eyebrows when I describe Ludwig van Beethoven's monumental Piano Sonata op 106 (the so-called Hammerklavier ) as “music on the edge of madness”, as if I were seeking to denigrate its searing intensity, profound spirituality and incandescent fury. I will never understand this reaction. I revere the Hammerklavier, which presents music of the highest explosive power, sitting, as we experience its titanic traversal, alongside passages of the most intimate and prolonged introspection. It could not have been created by a person who lived a workaday existence. The word 'mad' derives from the old English gemædde, meaning 'out of one's mind', in the sense of a 'violent excitement'. Such a state of mind seems to me to be the one experienced by Beethoven in his composition of the afore-mentioned Sonata, by Chopin in the terrifying – or 'gruselig', to use the fabulous German adjective - final, scurrying movement of his Sonata op 35, or Robert Schumann when he poured forth his vertiginously sensual, truly bipolar 'Kreisleriana'. I also particularly like it that the Middle-English word for 'mad' is wood . This was a source of amusement to me during my teenage study of Chaucer but, when we remember that the term grew out of an old High German word Wout (indicating rage) and before that, an Indo-European word Wāt, meaning to be excited or inspired, a fresh perspective and enlightenment is attained. I love this word 'wood' in the context of a mental state anyway as, rightly or wrongly, it suggests being attuned to the natural world. In 1889, Vincent van Goch painted the 'Asylum' in which he was living. The canvas presents a vision of peace blessed by the sun, the azure skies of the Midi casting healing energy onto the residential institution below. It is worth remembering that the real meaning of the word 'Asylum' holds a positive and protective truth, rather than one suggesting a depository for the dysfunctional. In the glorious painting above, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, two figures appear melded with the curling tree-trunks, as if they truly become 'wood'. “ Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide”. (John Dryden – poet and literary critic, 1631-1700) THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS... Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

I have recently enjoyed a 'mini-holiday' (much-needed) in the form of a visit by a dear friend from Germany. In anticipation of our my friend's visit, we started looking at possibilities for trips here and there and, inevitably, the question of exhibitions reared its attractive head. I had read of Monet and London at the Courtauld https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-monet-and-london-views-of-the-thames/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgrO4BhC2ARIsAKQ7zUn9iEIefa9YooRj2rFg6SQvjzUiEOwHxe5rpkiljwoAhIZ4iarU7RoaAmW2EALw_wcB , and my friend told me of what promised to be an absorbing and provocative show at the Barbican, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975 – 1998 . https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/the-imaginary-institution-of-india-art-1975-1998 My friend's inspired choice (she has also contributed ideas to this column on occasions!) won the day. Attending on the opening day, we were not disappointed. This exciting, absorbing and moving exhibition – and I quote from the lovely small, simple, pink-covered, seemingly recycled paper catalogue - “surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation.” The collection - presented in agreeably low light - is meticulously and astutely curated, with each room being clearly indicated in the catalogue as to its direction, and a wonderful spiral of clockwise flow in the upper rooms leading, thereafter, downstairs to the final tranche of exhibits. We spent three hours absorbing this mesmeric display. The time passed in a flash. The free catalogue goes much further than merely listing the art. It also offers a Timeline of Social and Political Events during the period; these include episodes concerning Indira Ghandi and her son Sanjay about which I remember hearing and reading during my adolescence. A glossary of terms is also included. Extra poignancy was added due to the Bengali heritage of my daughter's partner, and conversations that we have had together on that subject. The exhibition, which runs until 5th January 2025, comprises a wide range of work in paint on canvas, etchings, photography, sculpture, writings, film and installations. It is powerfully eclectic in its artistic variety and equally diverse and inclusive ideologically, presenting gay rights and feminist content alongside political and environmental themes. REMEMBERING TOBA TEK SINGH - Nalini Malani, 1998 On my exhibition list, Monet at the Courtauld may soon get a look in, but Francis Bacon:Human Presence  at the National Portrait Gallery has to be a priority. Regular readers of this blog will know that the art of Francis Bacon has always been a seminal influence on my work. A forthcoming visit to Norwich will necessarily take in a trip to the Sainsbury Centre, where works by Bacon reside, and where my near obsession with his vision was born. It's good to be back. I've been quiet, of late. I've missed writing this column. EXHIBITION FEVER Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

Vincent Van Gogh said (maybe) “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Whether Vincent Van penned or uttered those words at all matters not so much. There is more than a grain of truth in them. Small is very often beautiful. Abstract Art typically comes in sizes XL and upwards, and – for an abstract painter - there is indeed nothing like unleashing a torrent of expressionist angst on a really large canvas, revelling in the very act of painting which imbues abstract art with such a great amount of its power. My way, however, is often to work against the norm. As much as flinging paint over wide surfaces, I enjoy distilling the psychological essence into a highly concentrated tincture, by working small. In past years much-missed, I used to spend a great deal of time in the Languedoc region of Southern France (which I wrote about here https://www.artfullyabstractedblog.com/post/art-and-terroir for those who are interested to read a little more about my artistic heart). In the local town of Lodève I regularly used to visit the Musée Fleury https://www.museedelodeve.fr/en/ which houses a small but magnificent and eclectic collection of Art. Nestled in the collection was a very small painting by – I'm pretty sure – Braque (my mind has blanked at the wrong moment). I loved it. My art-friend in those parts was sniffy, which made me sad, for I loved this painting's concise, compact economy. If you've already read my last post, you'll know that my artistic juices have not been abundant of late. I'm trying to crank things up again though, so here are two paintings from about five weeks ago. Yes, they are diminutive; and one of them is doing its hardest not to dry! All original paintings by me may be viewed at https://www.haydndickenson.com/ . Please contact me via that site or here to discuss purchase. SMALL THINGS BROUGHT TOGETHER copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

A few of you know that, just over three weeks ago, my brother-in-law passed away after the sudden onset of a short but horrific infection. I do not intend to do much in today's post but to show you the painting I have made in his memory. My artistic mojo has been in abeyance for a while now, due to multiple factors, but I did manage to summon up the juices last week to make this large canvas, which captures something of Andrew's outsize character and larger-than-life eccentricity. Andrew was a loyal supporter of this blog and gave me at least one brilliant suggestion for an article upon which I acted – others were a little controversial! As we approach the 100th article in this column, I'll try to get things moving again as we slide into Autumn; reluctantly, for me, as I'm still feeling 'late Summer'! IN MEMORIAM BIG MAN copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

Some of the best quotes are never fully attributable to any one individual. Either that or their words and/or essence have been massaged to suit the quoter. In the art world, many dubious quotes exist among those attributed to Picasso. Peter Feuchtwanger, while I studied piano with him, had a wonderful sentence to which he turned often in lessons and which influences me to this day. It ran, broadly, thus: “ The marks in a musical score tell us everything about a musical composition, except the most important element, its essential character” . With these words, Prof. Feuchtwanger encouraged us to 'read between the lines' in a score, and discover its ineffable meaning. My great teacher had enormous respect for the written score, but simultaneously decried the 'book-keeper' tendencies of many modern musicians. I do not believe for a moment that Feuchtwanger meant to pass these wise observations off as his own; but I believed them to be his, and told many people that this was so, before much later reading the same words attributed to the great conductor Bruno Walter, whom Peter knew! Perhaps even Dr Walter was quoting someone else. Just the other day, I came across a supposed quote from the Canadian-American artist Philip Guston (1913-1980). The aphorism goes as follows: “ When you are in the studio painting, there are lots of people in there with you – your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics...and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out, and if you're truly painting, you walk out”. It seems that Guston did say or write these words, but they have also been attributed (mildly paraphrased) to the American composer John Cage! I feel a discussion coming on! What do my readers think of this Gusto-Cagey statement? Do feel free to write a public comment. WITH GUSTO, OR BEING CAGEY? Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

Well guys, this is now a nonagenarian site! It's taken me just under two years, but here we are on the ninetieth piece of artistic polemic to flutter out from the windows of Artfully Abstracted Towers. Will there be a telegram from artistic royalty in ten posts' time? From the wonderful Dame Tracey Emin perhaps? That would be nice. As for today's title, please forgive the heavy wordplay – all will become clear in four paragraphs' time! For a bit of background to today's piece, I grew up with a narcissistic, sociopathic loser for a father. Not jolly information, this, I am aware, but relevant, for context. My formative years were restricted to the point of strangulation, especially with regard to culture and, especially, music. There was no musical initiation for me that was not forbidding Sibelius or priapic Scriabin. I forged one half of my career in the classical music that I love, and I have no regrets in this regard, but the proscription of huge swathes of culture in my development was criminal, and I suffered as a result. I still do. I have made mistakes in my life, but I vowed never to restrict my own daughter in anything approaching a similar way and I succeeded in that aim. My darling granddaughter, in turn, knows much about Steely Dan, The Kinks and Bob Dylan, but less (as yet) about Bach and Beethoven. Philip Glass has passed the taste test. The sixth-form common room at school helped to to compensate for the deficit. There I got to know Vangelis, Kate Bush, Gerry Rafferty and others, and the deliciously rollicking album NEW BOOTS AND PANTIES by Ian Dury, who remains one of my favourite musical artists to this day. Dury, in his artistic personality, draws from an eclectic pool of Punk, Jazz, Funk, Music-Hall, Vaudeville and hints of Brecht-Weill Berlin Theatre Songs. He was a quite brilliant musician and wordsmith - funny, rude and uncompromising. Now do you get today's title? Ian Dury was also a provocative visual artist and, after his own studies, he went on to teach at various art schools across the south of England. Under the tutelage of Peter Blake at Art School, Dury developed some pretty serious drawing skills which can be seen here https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/walthamstow-school-of-art-be-magnificent-exhibition-ian-dury-peter-blake-240517 - look particularly at pages from his sketchbooks. Inspired by my ponderings on the great 'Clever Trevor' (if you don't know Dury's song, take a listen, as it is a masterclass in word-craft and timing) I have been reflecting on the great number of illustrious musician-painters and painter-musicians both living and passed. The examples I offer below are by no means exhaustive, but I hope they provide some interesting food for thought, about how we need not adhere to one creative outlet alone. The great classical pianist Sviatoslav Richter was a passionate and committed painter. In the picture below, lonely and tragic intimations of late Schubert – which Richter interpreted sublimely on the piano – have been suggested by critics. Personally I see in it the slow movement of the last of Schubert's Sonatas, D960, in my opinion one of the pinnacles of all musical composition. Bob Dylan is another great musician and wordsmith whose works with brush and paint have become justly famous. I confess to being less than universally enamoured of Dylan's paintings, but there is a heavy, ruddy richness that I like, in the one below. On the other side of the coin, many are the renowned painters who have also proved themselves to be fine musicians. The Renaissance master Tintoretto played the lute and other instruments, some of his own invention; and Leonardo da Vinci, the 'Renaissance Man' par excellence, invented and played numerous hybrid instruments including hurdy-gurdies and precursors of the modern keyboard. I have always been of the opinion that, when we call ourselves painters, poets, pianists, actors or dancers, we are actually just name-checking different colours in a creative spectrum. To put it prosaically, it's all part of the same thing. Peter Feuchtwanger, a man who stamped indelible marks onto my artistic and human consciousness, was a pianist, a revolutionary musical pedagogue and a composer but, alongside pianists and conductors, he cited at least two dancers – Alicia Markova and Toni Lander - as two of his greatest influences. I recognised this in the unique fluidity and naturalness of the movements which he espoused in his pioneering approach to piano playing. You can read an interview with me here https://www.haydndickenson.com/interviews , in which I talk about the confluence of all art forms. As I age - and boy do I age, it sometimes feels - I am drawn (apart from painting and practising, currently, Kapustin Etudes on the piano) to writing poetry and immersing myself in 35 mm and 120 black and white film photography on vintage cameras. I have even started making short experimental performance-art films. Above all and always, I seek self-expression. Writing this column, too, brings much pleasure in that same respect. I studied English at University and I was a terrible student, because I was made to do it. I wanted nothing else but to play the piano, and perform. I hated reading, I hated writing, but most of all I hated being told what I must do. Now, I adore reading, and embrace the scribe within me, while my executant art-direction is with painting that was born in me through my artist mother. One day I may write my life-story. If you want to see the magnificent Ian Dury speak eloquently about his life, take a look here https://www.google.com/search?q=ian+dury+michael+parkinson&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB976GB976&oq=ian+dury+michael&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgFECEYnwUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRifBdIBCDkwNTRqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:dc0f1a4d,vid:cBsHSbVRNJI,st:0 . The tedious interviewer, Michael Parkinson, opens by mispronouncing Dury's surname. Maybe they didn't have researchers in those days. Like me, enduring the the various asinine permutations of my name that regularly appear (I was recently addressed in an email by a gallery owner who knows me personally , as 'Hayley'), Ian loathed his name being pronounced 'Doory' or worse, Drury. Parkinson then clambers up onto the disabled bandwagon (rather than seeking to talk about about Ian's music) just as Sue Lawley quizzed the great pianist John Ogdon about his harrowing mental breakdowns and suicide attempts in an equally pathetic interview in which both Ogdon and his pianist wife Brenda are visibly distressed. Ogdon, incidentally, though not a painter, was an exceptional writer – a man of towering intellect. The famously irascible Ian Dury rises to nothing in Parkinson's interview, expressing himself with articulate dignity throughout; surprising perhaps, given that he was notoriously outspoken and didn't suffer fools. Lucky Parky! Chaz Jankel, Dury's guitarist and keyboard player has said “Ian never wanted to be a pop star. He was more the left-wing art student, the punk movement happened to happen at the same time as Ian but he never called himself a punk. His musical influences were very broad. He loved great literature too, and music hall.” So there we have it – an all-encompassing creative geezer. I was going to end in a more pretentious vein, but Ian Dury really was an amazing geezer, so let's just leave it there. NEW BOOTS AND PAINTINGS: COPYRIGHT Haydn Dickenson 2024.

I knew an amazing lady, now sadly deceased, who was celebrated as a doyenne of the British film industry. That lady was Renée Glynne, and a firebrand of a personality she was, right into her nineties. Renée's professional credits include production and continuity supervision on such iconic British films as BRIEF ENCOUNTER, LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY and CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, stretching into a long association with Hammer Horror Films, and British TV including Doctor Who, The New Avengers and The Saint. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/03/renee-glynne-obituary On top of Renée's illustrious background in film, she was also a painter; she and I used to exhibit together. Renée was a coruscatingly larger-than-life character, a fountain of stories and anecdotes - many of them scandalous, and all highly entertaining. Her paintings and drawings were, unsurprisingly, individual and often provocative. In the environment in which Renée and I were exhibiting, the display of nude paintings had to be approached with some caution. Alongside her louche and characterful depictions of London bar-life however, Renée was never shy about hanging her nudes, many of these being of male subjects. Much missed, Renée typified the kind of artist who approaches the human body (and indeed life) with relish and honesty, eschewing judgement and avoiding glamourisation. Other artists with a similar outlook on the body are include Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville. Francis Bacon went one step, or perhaps several, further. Bacon saw beauty in the grotesque, the violent and the horrific. I have recently re-watched the marvellous film about Bacon's life with George Dyer, LOVE IS THE DEVIL, featuring stellar performances from Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig among others. The photography in the film is as brilliant as the acting, unerringly evoking through distorting lens-work the alcoholically-fuelled existential whirlpool of Bacon's life and vision. Whether we align with Bacon's vision or not – or even like his art - it is impossible to deny the visceral ferocity of this iconic painter's output. Bacon has commented “The very act of being born is a ferocious thing”. I find the human body magnificent. Though I am not a figurative painter, I take enormous inspiration and energy from the flowing lines, planes and curves of the human body; all of these fundamentally infuse my abstract work. Influenced by Rodin's delicate and sensual erotic drawings I was, during an earlier part of my career, known for rapid, fleeting nude line drawings that I produced and sold while simultaneously developing my abstract style. Is the human body monstrous, or is it magnificent? Surely, in its messy secretions as well as its divine secrets, in its blunt functionality as much as its sumptuous splendour, it is both, and more. No wonder that the human form has engrossed artists for as long as marks have been made by an implement on a surface. In her recent book, ART MONSTERS: UNRULY BODIES IN FEMINIST ART (Vintage Publishing) Lauren Elkin discusses the depiction of the female body – often by female artists - in all its diverse glory. The book, which I have yet to read, was brought to my attention by a friend in the form of a review in THE GUARDIAN, and it was the title that piqued my interest. Unruly sounds a fantastic – if socially unachievable - way for a body to be! At the head of today's piece I mentioned my old friend Renée Glynne. One day in 2015, while we were exhibiting together, Renée brought up the name of the South African artist Marlene Dumas (b 1953). Marlene and Renée, it turned out, were close friends, and Renée told me of the former's upcoming exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, THE IMAGE AS BURDEN. Fascinated by Renée's descriptions of Marlene's paintings, I made a visit to the exhibition a priority; This exhibition ranks among the most unforgettable that I have attended. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/marlene-dumas-image-burden The images below are pages from the book that accompanied the exhibition. One the one hand Marlene Dumas presents the naked body with objective sincerity. On the other, she discovers the erotic in unexpected places. Dumas, on top of sex, offers death, ugliness, and trauma to the artistic table. She is an artist of unpretentious and searing vision. She finds magnificence in monstrosity. The second part of today's title refers to the use of photographic reference by painters. Marlene Dumas, it is said, never works from life, but uses photographic images – often well-known ones – as springboards for her representations of faces and bodies. As a keen photographer myself, I too have employed this approach and find it a fascinating one, for the camera sees differently from the eye. The photographic image that one has seized as a 'moment' becomes a prism through which a drawing is subsequently refracted. Indeed, I used to title my early nude drawings 'Moments'. Moreover, I have love the way in which Marlene Dumas brings a quasi-photographic technique even into her painting, often cropping-in close on a subject. In this way, a heightened awareness of inspection on the part of the viewer, and challenging confrontation on the part of the subject, are encouraged. Francis Bacon too, was known to paint from photos, indeed his preoccupation with diverse reference material in the form of other artists' paintings, together with film and photography, is well-documented. In a typically Baconesque downplaying of the approach, he declared “It's easier for me to work from these records than from the people themselves – that way I can work alone and feel much freer.” To be free, magnificent, and at times monstrous – this seems to me to be a fine artistic aspiration in itself! BODIES: MONSTROUS OR MAGNIFICENT, AND THE USE OF PHOTOS AS PAINTING REFERENCE - Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

Colour influences our lives at every turn. We decide what colour to paint the walls in our homes, which colour to choose for our car, or for the clothes that we will drape on our bodies, and much more. Even the colour of the food we eat influences our menu-choice – food is surely a multi-sensory pleasure. Our food also impacts our physical colouration as humans. Beige food is unhealthy – it is food devoid of micronutrients. It is non-food. Look at the sit-down customers in a seaside fish-and-chip shop. You can tell who eats there regularly, for they look beige. Fish and chips, however delicious as a treat, is a beige food. We can, if we wish, commission a colour-analysis that decides for us which colours will suit our complexion, our physiognomy, our build and so on. Personally I prefer a more spontaneous, individual and eclectic approach to dressing myself and decorating my home. It's cheaper too. I wear a lot of black. I love black, and regard it as one of my favourite colours. Black is timeless, and you can't argue with it easily. I don't like to be argued with. Henry Ford, in 1919, famously offered his new Model T Ford in “any colour so long as it's black”. My granddaughter tells me that black is not a colour, so I can't include it among my favourites; but I can and do. I also love to wear pink. I know - don't even try to categorise me. My painting, SPEAK YOUR MIND, is an almost entirely monochrome canvas, featuring greys and blacks of varying intensity. It's reception seems to indicate light responses rather than dark ones, and its title reflects, perhaps, the unequivocal - 'don't argue with me' - stance mentioned above. The prevalent tones of this painting do not indicate any morbidity on my part. I am about to embark on two companion paintings to form a trio with SPEAK YOUR MIND, which will be pitched by my representatives to a particular very high-profile art collector; a trio of blacks and greys, ameliorated perhaps by discreet accents of earth colours. I have always loved painting in grey – I find grey expressive. On the occasions when I venture into figurative drawings of the nude human form, my work is invariably in graphite, with only occasional accents of colour. In the same way, most of my analogue photography on 35 mm and 120 film (another of my passions) is in black and white. I dislike stereotypes and clichés. I don't like people to assume I am angry or have indigestion if I produce a painting that contains red, nor that I am sad if blue is predominant. No, I don't have a 'Blue Period'. Different colours mean different things to different people and one person's hellfire might be another person's panacea. I adore the natural world but, though it undeniably influences my painting in innumerable subtle ways, the most obvious colour of nature – green - rarely appears in my pictures. If green raises its head, it is more likely to tend towards the poison hues rather than the bucolic ones. A gallerist once commented on my 'colour-madness'. I liked that. Naturally, when choosing art for the home, the client's colour-preferences come into play, but that is another matter altogether. The colour-psychology of consumption may very well be at odds with that of creation. It would be both precious and pretentious to deny or decry the fact that the choosing of a painting becomes a part of interior design. So it should! A wonderful painting might look dreadful in the wrong setting; amidst, perhaps, the 'wrong' colours, or incongruous furniture and artifacts. A bad painting probably doesn't have a 'right setting' at all! This evening's title comes from a lovely sentence from an artist whose colour-language drips with warmth and sensuality: “ Colour – what a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams!” Paul Gauguin. A DEEP AND MYSTERIOUS LANGUAGE Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024

When the new, pretty striking, portrait of King Charles was unveiled, I was kept entertained for some time by searching and reading popular reaction to it. There were, of course, the predictable 'is it unfinished?-type' remarks. I've been there, Mr Yeo. I feel your pain. Then there were the outlandishly diverse interpretations of the butterfly motif, and of course the memes, some of which substituted photoshopped sausages for the King's well-documented swollen digits. Jonathan Yeo is a superb artist. In my opinion, his portrait of the King does not represent his finest hour, but I absolutely love it that the portrait breaks a few boundaries and smashes several preconceptions as to what a portrait of a 'royal' should be. Mr Yeo is in good company. Lucian Freud's rendering of Queen Elizabeth caused a bit of a stir, Justin Mortimer offered us a brilliant decapitated Queen, and Andy Warhol did her too (Ooh lala)! Amusingly, straight off the bat came the conspiracy-theory-fuelled 'dark' interpretations of Jonathan Yeo's picture. For instance: Some imaginative dude decided that the painting reminded him of “that insanely scarily demonic painting in Ghostbusters 2”. Never mind that Charles stands with his hands passively overlaid in front of him and is painted in red, and the Ghostbusters painting has arms akimbo in a yellow hue; but so it went on, from one hilarious lurch of fancy to the next. Other people took the Charles painting and reversed it, mirrored it, turned it upside-down, made negative images out of it and ran it through a washing-machine cycle (in respect to HM, eco-setting of course) and discovered all kinds of hidden devils, demons, goats and scary heads by subjecting the by now abused painting to a ludicrous over-scrutiny devoid of all nuance and intuition. Now, I am not a royalist and I am not a Christian, so I do not recognise the supposed 'divine right of kingship'; thus the subject matter of this poor, already battle-torn painting of is not of especial interest to me (although Charles talks to plants and I like that). I do, however, enjoy an internet scrap as much as the next person, and I 'may' even have seen the potential, in some of what I read, for a blog post therein! Ah, bless you, TikTok art critics and gaming-chair pundits with your vacuous flailings. There are those among us who claim existential or divine revelations by what they see in the clouds - very often Jesus, it must be said. This is probably a little like sitting in front of a log fire after one brandy too many, and seeing pictures in the embers. In a certain frame of mind, we may 'see things' in almost anything in our orbit. There is nothing wrong with that if it gives us comfort, but we need to be careful when applying such a route as an approach to art. Art deserves a purer, more accepting and less nervous inroad. It really is fine just to find a painting beautiful in its own right. I have written often on this subject – here, for instance https://www.artfullyabstractedblog.com/post/don-t-look-for-look-passively - and I will remind my readers once again that, with abstract art, we need to lay ourselves open to absorption, to receiving the intrinsic beauty of a painting without following tangible suggestions towards it. As one of my readers wrote, in response to the article linked above, such an exploration is a very 'freeing' one. I walked out of the gym today through the beautiful park in the town where I live contemplating an apparent desire in some people, to discover representational (and ultimately finite) meaning in philosophically flowing, abstract, evanescent and metaphysical things. 'In the mood', I decided to gaze into the lush avenue of lime trees above me, convinced that, as soon as I did so, I would see a sign, a symbol! How right I was! Directly above me, the pleached glory of the fecund spring boughs had arranged themselves into a perfect, leafy love-heart above my head. This surely meant that Summer 2024 would be the summer of love for me! Only joking about what I saw in the trees! If you know me even only superficially, you will know me much better than that; you will know that I am fine with such a scenario not being so! There was the 'sign' though, clear and resplendent – how puzzling! I trust that the preceding irony is not lost on my readers. Mightily relieved, two steps later I saw that the blinding revelation had evaporated and, reinforced, I could focus once more on the intrinsic majesty of the soft, young, arching leaves. I needed no more. I never need more. As in nature, so it is in art. The lapping, verdant branches of a noble, ancient tree above us hold no meaning apart from their natural grandeur; and that meaning is immense, limitless. Schubert's final, miraculous piano sonata is a glory of human creation in itself. We can look at the hardship of Schubert's life and his premature death and contemplate its possible, even probable, impact on the music; but really all we need is the music alone, a creation that ranks as one of the most supreme that we know. I once heard Jeremy Siepmann describe a historically anachronistic but artistically sublime performance of a Scarlatti Sonata by the great pianist Emil Gilels as demonstrating “musical truth”, despite its disregard for period veracity. How right he was, and how absolutely I believe we need to look at all art in a similar way. Surely, Truth is what we seek. In Rolf Peter Kahl's 2016 film BEDWAYS (don't watch it if you are easily offended, and don't say I told you to!) the actress booked to perform in the 'film-within-a-film' asks “what is all this about?” The answer offered by the director of the film-within-a-film is “I don't know yet. That's what we're trying to discover.” I know this article has travelled a little distance beyond King Charles' sausage-fingers and whether or not the Illuminati are at play in his recent portrait but, ultimately, I merely wanted to highlight some of the dangers of 'reading things into things'. “When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left to find the way”. (Ancient Japanese proverb). THE KING'S DEMONS, JESUS IN THE CLOUDS, AND LOVE HEARTS IN THE TREES Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024