Stalingrad

Vitaly Arutyunov The Mamayev Hill series, First prize, World Press Photo 1987.©RIA Novosti / TopFoto

The caption to this image reads (with a bit of editing): 'the 52m-tall monument The Motherland Calls was the tallest statue in the world when erected in 1967.  Mamayev Kurgan overlooks the city of Volograd, formerly Stalingrad, in southern Russia. The name in Russian means tumulus of Mamai. Today, Mamayev Kurgan features a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad.'

TopFoto is such an interesting place: each day an image from exactly 50 years ago.  It is hardly ancient history, but not only is the past a different country, but the past seems a curiously innocent and optimistic country.  1961: people had survived the war, life was getting prosperous, tragedies were passionately commemorated, as above, on the eve of the Cold War. 

scaffolds

17 December 1985: scaffolding removed from Liberty's hand

Scaffolding allows us proximity to some very large myths.

V

Winston Churchill demonstrating a British V for victory against Nazi Germany.

V for victory is how it was used by Churchill in WWII.  We know now how very close Britain was to defeat; it was important for Churchill to show indomitable surety that victory was nigh.  
It is a combination of the hand of solidarity and the letter V.  It is also the two-fingered Cub salute: the two fingers are the ears of Akela, the wolf cub.  You remembered that didn't you?

Victory and peace.  We also know now that victory does not automatically mean peace.  Nixon used to hold both hands up in a fractal of two-fingered Vs at the end of a two-armed V – this where the V for victory in Vietnam was at odds with the V meaning Peace, man.  Throughout the late 1960s and early 70s peace meant withdrawal, not victory, an absence of victory as the battle was given up rather than waiting for defeat.  

The V hand sign has emerged again in the Arab Spring, where valour, valediction, validity and victory has been signed by every child, every woman, every student and rebel in each country as entrenched power structures were dismantled.  Tunisia and Egypt's demonstrations were non-violent resistance movements; this didn't work in Libya and isn't working in Syria.  Here V stands for a victory not of the individual who as he is rushed off on a stretcher manages to lift a hand and weakly flash two fingers, no, here the victory is for a people who will never go back, no matter what it takes, even if it takes generations.  

A young Libyan girl flashes the "V sign" with her two fingers painted with the old national flag's colours, during a demonstration against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi outside the court house of Benghazi.Shockingly, in looking for the images here, I found recent pictures of Ahmedinijad in Iran and Saif al Qadhafi both complacently saluting their audiences with a V: here they are indicating their roots in revolutionary movements from a long, long time ago.  The green flag of Qadhafi's revolutionary movement, the target in the Libyan uprising, represented the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya: green is the traditional colour of Islam.  Green was the colour of protest in Iran in 2009, one sees on the news Palestinian coffins draped in green.  The V and Green seem to be very specific in their applications depending on which people are using them, where and at what stage are their revolutions.

There is something about all these symbols and signs that coalesce around peace, non-violence and solidarity, and revolution, war and victory.  These conditions seem to be all very closely linked and the symbols oscillate between them.

at the sign of the fist

NEHouse. painted fist, 2009

The fist of solidarity.  No letters here, just a clenched hand as a measure of intent.  Wikipedia tells us it dates from ancient Assyria as 'a symbol of resistance in the face of violence'.  It was adopted by the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, in 1917.  It was the Republican salute in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39, and the salute of Smith and Carlos at the 1968 Olympics during the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.  It has become a symbol for human rights.

All of these symbols originate as demonstrations against violence.  The fist works two ways: one as a punching fist, the other as a stilled hand: closed, the opposite of the open hand of the nazi salute.  It is almost as if there is an implicit threat in the fist which can be a weapon but which actually comes from numbers, rather than any threat of individual action.

All the symbols this week have been against violence at the state level: civil and human rights, disenfranchisement, discriminatory policies.  And while not all are ancient symbols, none of them are new; they aren't brands thought up by a marketting agency.  Somehow these symbols carry a great dignity with them; their original intentions are so powerful that their message bypasses the intellect.  I do wonder if this bypass of the intellect is not at the root of power, and can be used for both good and ill.

The golden fist of Qahdafi crushing an American jet, 1986. Tripoli

Below is a stencilled version of the sign for Autonomism, which is allied with socialism, marxism and anarchism, influenced by the Situationists and has a number of autonomist wings in several European countries.  As the word suggests, it favours autonomous action against the structures and processes of capitalism, rather than an sort of organised mass movement.  It appears to be more guerilla-like, under the radar, with activities such as absenteeism.  But they have a sign.  

Autonome, at the Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus in Vienna, Austria

signs of revolutions betrayed

Bolshevik Revolution: hammer for the industrial proletariat bonded to the sickle for agricultural workers; red from the red banner of the Paris Commune, 1917

No letters here, just action: the hammer as the tool of industrialisation, the sickle the tool of agriculture.  They are wielded by hands, neither of them are weapons.  One could be writing in the world of synecdoche here, and perhaps that adds depth to a symbol, but one can also write about hammers and sickles, factories and ploughs literally, without losing any meaning.  

In pre-revolutionary Russia Orthodoxy, red was the colour of Easter and the resurrection: how easy it was to elide that with the resurrection of the Russian people, the peasants and serfs, over the European aristocracy that ruled Russia.  And how simple to equate Christ's blood with martyred revolutionary blood.  

The  Phrygian cap of Liberty, le bonnet rouge of the French Revolution: Phrygia – today's Anatolia in Turkey.  Paris, the cause of the Trojan War, was a Phrygian and wore what we could now describe as a soft Turkish fez.  Red as the colour of liberty dates from the Roman Empire when freed slaves wore red Phrygian caps. It is interesting how involved ancient Greece was in what we consider today to be the hotbed of the Middle East.  It is contiguous by land and shares the eastern Mediterranean.  Modern Greece's default from European values, as it is being put, is perhaps more deeply rooted than the EU can accept.  

In 1976 Andy Warhol did a series of silkscreens called Hammer & Sickle where he photographed an actual hammer and a hand scythe in various collaborations. No one will ever be able to convince me that Warhol and pop art were not political.  One can say Warhol valourised the American commercial landscape and endorsed celebrity, but this does not allow him a deep anarchic sense of irony, if that is not an oxymoron. 

In the depths of the cold war, by de-coupling the symbol from the tools, he referred to the Soviet Union as industry and agriculture, not nuclear bombs.  After the fall of the USSR when many previously inaccessible 'ordinary' people were interviewed and we were able to read literature of the era from the other side, what was revealed was a fear of the west and its weaponry, precisely what we had been taught to fear about the east.  What a waste of the twentieth century it all was.  So many died.

Andy Warhol. 
Hammer & Sickle, 1976 
 acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas (182.9 x 218.4 x 3.2 cm.)
 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

signs of patience

Calgary, August 2011

Someday, when you have lots and lots of time and absolutely nothing else to do, and a great bag of finishing nails you know you will never use, you can make a number plate for your garage like this one.

writing and power

Bab Al Aziziya compound monument, Tripoli. August 23 2011

the MacLean's method

The MacLean’s method of handwriting. 
H. B. Maclean, Victoria, c. 1921. Developed in Victoria by educator H. B. MacLean between 1921 and 1964, the MacLean method was used across Canada as the official handwriting method in schools, particularly in the Maritimes, parts of Quebec, Manitoba, and BC. Sources
Text: Shirley Cuthbertson’s “H.B. MacLean’s Method of Writing” in BC Historical News
Photo: Allan Collier Collection

It all looks very odd now, but this is how I was taught: pages of O's done moving your whole arm sliding over the desk with ease.  Practice makes perfect, and perfect was entirely without character or identity.  When I looked at Jack Layton's wacky little fillips on his highly legible signature – well, this was usually  the only place that individuality was added (much later in life than elementary school) to this relentless, flattened commercial script.  

One could completely change one's writing style, especially if one went into architecture where you either did drafting printing for the rest of your life, or went to some sort of arty italic calligraphic script.  But now, most people don't write at all, except blurted little shopping lists or illegible signatures at the bottom of a VISA bill.

Writing is like drawing, something we don't often do much either these days, preferring to cobble images together with Illustrator and Photoshop – activities that engage a completely different part of the brain than drawing, on paper, with a curious instrument holding either ink or graphite, in the hand. 

face hand camera | rock paper scissors

Richard Hamilton Swingeing London. 1968-9 Acrylic, collage and aluminium on canvas. 848 x 1030 x 100 mm. Tate Collection T01144

the open hand of chandigarh

This comes by way of Reza Aliabadi, of atelier rzlbd.

palm print identification

For those who could possibly understand how such things work: a System for Biometric Authorisation of Internet Users Based on Fusion of Face and Palmprint Features.

a handful of drives

Polly Hill. Driving map of Santa Cruz, 1912

There is a nice write up of this hand map on Strange Maps.  It reminds me that there was a time when people got into cars and drove around, looking at things, usually on Sunday afternoons.  Let's go out for a drive!  Who today in their right mind would think this was a treat?  but it used to be.

Driving has become such a chore: too fast, too much road surface, too noisy, an A to B experience, preferrably without incident.  No time to look at scenery, no stopping for gas and finding a courteous attendant, in fact little courtesy on the road itself.  It is all such a struggle. 

sati

Loha Pol, Mehrangarh Fort, Rajasthan

Not sure how sati could operate as a form of colonial resistance. Although sati was banned by the British in 1829, when in 1834 the maharaja of Rajasthan, Man Singh, died his 15 wives left their hand prints at the inner gate to the Mehrangarh Fort before they laid themselves on his funeral pyre.  Many would have been children, unfairly widowed at 10 years old, facing either sati or a solitary life dressed in white, dependent on charity, working as menials.

Roop Kanwar committed sati in 1987, a voluntary act that pointed out a serious clash of values between urban India and traditional village practice and lead to a trail where eleven people were charged with glorification of sati.  

It seems all of a part with purdah, the burkha, child marriage, honour killings– things incomprehensible to me, child of the late 20th century west that I am.  Feminist theory claims that empowerment comes from 'owning' such things, finding power in being scorned and reviled, viz the current furore around the slut walk.  In theory perhaps, but in practice, one needs to live several centuries to see the benefits.

hand prints

Bridal mehndi

The fingerprint, the handprint, somehow we feel they make us unique.  However, nothing is like the henna designs on hands, arms and feet found at a Muslim wedding.  I think the picture above is a traditional Pakistani design, a tradition that has exploded across cultures, subject to fashion trends, co-opted by all and sundry as a kind of temporary tattoo.  Arabic designs look to me more like Victorian lace fingerless mittens.  Modern fashions seem to tilt towards floral sprays scrolling away over the body. 

There are zillions of mehndi sites.  The one the picture comes from (above) gives us a look at the extreme decorativeness of Pakistani, Indian and Arabian wedding jewellery, saris and mehndi: ornate, elaborate, fanciful, arduous to produce, signs of great attention and no doubt wealth.

It is all about the hand, our interface with the world, the holder of our fortunes.  The good luck khamsa of Morroco, below, is at once a handprint, a mehndi hand and a hand held up to warn off misfortune.

Morrocan khamsa charm

more identity

Yves St Laurent. Fingerprint necklace, 2011.

Well, what have we got here? 
Issues of identity are in the air. 

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly. Apollo & Artist, 1975on lists: the Cy Twombly website is very generous.  It has all his work from 1951 to 2010 in 5-year periods.  If one is feeling desperate, one could do worse than to pick a year and look at all the drawings and paintings he did that year.  And then some other time, look at a completely different year.  I've always thought his work was about handwriting. The drawings seem to be full of written instructions for how to see. 

The Menil Centre in Houston has a pavilion dedicated to Twombly, solid, but it feels inside like a white canvas tent so the light is pale and completely diffuse. On the Menil website it doesn't look at all as I remember it: I remember paintings the size of the walls in quite small spaces.  They were wonderful.

Some work makes me very hopeful.

lists and letters

Juta Savage letter to Dorothy Weiss, 1984 Oct. 6. 1 item : ill. ; 36 x 43 cm. Dorothy Weiss Gallery records, [circa 1964]-2001 (bulk 1984-2000). Archives of American ArtJulia Kirwan put together Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Archives of American Art from the Smithsonian collections.  There was an exhibition of all the lists in Washington through most of last year and there is a book, published by Princeton Architectural Press.

This is a case where even a shopping list has a kind of rivetting assemblage of marks on the page.  Juta Savage's collection of teapots above is not only a letter, but also the working out of variations.  The hand is an automatic extension of the eye and mind.  This is, all artists will tell you, why they are such good snooker players. 

cross-writing

Mrs. F. L. Bridgeman to Fanny West, December 15, 1837. F775 (1837-10) Archives of OntarioWhen paper and postage were expensive.
The eye follows the logic of the marks: a case where the overall appearance is at odds with the details.  

small tools held in great affection

my all-time favourite tool: little hammer, hatchet, screwdriver, nail puller, wire cutter, pliers and whatever that top bit is called that cuts the heads off nails.  Sturdy, dates from before the 1950s, a novelty item perhaps, but surprisingly useful it has been.  And it is so tiny.
 
Is there a name for tools that combine many functions?  where something can be a hammer and an inch later a wirecutter?  It is the opposite of that other attitude: the proper tool for every job.  That is what Lee Valley is based on.  No, this little handy dandy does not expect anyone to use it with great finesse, its function is to be helpful as one is muttering and banging around in the basement and hey presto! there it is, a tiny hammer to knock out a cottar pin wedged in the handle at the back of a clock, as happened this morning.  

Humour me, I'm on my holidays and such things loom large.

Lou Lynn: retro-active

Lou Lynn. Tools as Artifacts. 2009. glass, bronze

There used to be a junk store in Inglewood that just sold tools.  Most of the stuff I have came from it, a few pieces were bought new when I first moved to Calgary – my hammer and saw, and when the old CPR fellow across the alley died his son came to clear out the house and told me to take what I wanted from his father's workroom.  Which I did, except for the 4' piece of steel rail bolted to the bench.  

What I love about these old wrenches and planes, rakes and shovels, saws and chisels is the excellent steel of which they were made and the beautiful handles, satiny with long use under pressure. Compared to new tools with their bright dayglo colours and plastic handles, these old pieces are quiet and still, dark and graceful.

Lou Lynn, a sculptor living in the Slocan Valley, has had an exhibition, Retro-Active, travelling around the province this past year.  She works in bronze and glass, using the heft and monumentalism of basic tool shapes.  Some of the pieces are very large: cast glass adze heads, so large one's hand is Lilliputian.  Tools as Artifacts, 38 bronze and glass pieces pinned in a long line on the wall, are hand-scaled and like many old artifacts, each piece looks like a tool, but the function is unclear.  A piece with a bronze handle and a frosted glass prong is both humorous and mysterious.

In the Nanaimo Museum & Gallery installation Helen Sibelius, the curator of the retrospective, has paired Lynn's work with mining and forestry tools from the museum's collection.  These are no less mysterious: a half-inch thick iron spike like a 6-foot long knitting needle with a small wood handle at the top.
 
In all of this it is the small details that are so poignant.  A plain turned wood handle has a tiny line inscribed half an inch from where it joins the steel: a small, non-functional reference to a ferrule.  Lynn's sculptures makes much of these small details: she isn't making tools, but she is very aware of the hands that made tools, once, and all the small vanities they added to them.

Lou Lynn. Ladle. 2009 bronze, glass, 56 x 46 x 26cm.