CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT FOR BEGINNERS: Part One. Scribbled by Geoff Hall.

Cultural critique is like armchair football; you have a great view of the whole match, you criticise the manager’s selection, the overpaid ‘prima Donna’ of a striker who can only use one foot – ‘If he could use his left foot as well, he’d probably want £200,000 a week!’ you rant incredulously at the TV, because of course they can hear you!  However, in truth you never break into a sweat, unless the tin of beer is particularly resistant to being opened!  Mmm, tricky. 

Participation; now there’s a word to conjure with.  Lately, well for the last 15 years or so, I’ve become increasingly agitated by my own lack of it.  I don’t want to just commentate on our cultural tactics, God’s choice of less-abled, less passionate kind of nerd-do-wells, whilst sat in the Reformational Armchair of Disquiet, be it of a Dooyeweerdian or Kuyperian style and oh yes, puffing on that Professorial Cigar that I’ve heard so much about from Richard Russell; a fundamental part of reformational academia.  These were my aspirations some time ago; armchair, cigar and cultivated, penetrating critique; the stuff men and women of God are made of!  But not now!  My wife tells me that it’s down to my age; the reduced likelihood of returns from effort exerted is affecting my demeanour, allegedly.  Marriage is fun and a great leveller, just like a badly rutted, turnip patch of a football pitch, as in days of old at Derby County or Ayresome Park, or as we used to say in Hartlepool, ‘Ayresome, but never Awesome Park’!

So, this piece was originally entitled, rather pithily I thought, “Some thoughts from Barcelona concerning cultural engagement”.  I’ve just got back from there, spending four days with my family whilst the turnip patch at home was resurfaced and made more conducive to the kind of game I want to play; and also in truth, for the great occasion of my boy’s 21st birthday. 

‘Bonito!’ as they say in Spain, what a wonderful place.  However, I did feel a twinge of guilt stemming from my touristic infidelity.  Italian words kept popping into my head, which I had to quell as Spaniards look at you askance, as if to say, here’s another sad Englishman who doesn’t know where he is and is unable to speak Espanyol!  I’ve had worse insults, but when we travel abroad it is usually to Italy and in particular Venice.  If you make a linguistic mistake in Venice you can dismiss it with a little German, so that the English don’t get the blame, ‘Entschuldigen sie, bitte!’ and run down one of the lovely picturesque alleyways, dodging out-of-work gondoliers; but in Barcelona the streets are broad and people running look kind of conspicuous. 

Where was I?  Ah yes, on Sunday afternoon, returning from the Nou Camp - that’s FC Barcelona’s football ground for those of you who don’t know – I was given leave to visit one arty place, so I chose the Museu Picasso, in the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter.  I’d been warned by a friend, that what was exhibited there was obviously the stuff that none of the important galleries in the Rest of Europe (or America) wanted and so my expectations weren’t high.  A bit like going to a football club with a good ground, but once you get inside you realise that the players don’t live up to the quality of the architecture.  Middlesbrough FC comes to mind!!  Anyway, forgive my Las Ramblas of an aside and let’s get back to Picasso. 

Well yes, the architecture was rather good, the pictures too, but the restaurant was a bit pricey for my humble pocket.  So much for the idea of Reformational ‘cultural economy’ I thought and drat, I’ve come all this way to Barcelona and have to starve for the sake of a bit of art - because my £10 per week allowance just won’t cover it! 

I walked around the rooms, herded by some very ‘helpful’ security guards, ‘Gracias!’ was a word which came to mind!  It seemed I was finally getting used to the language!  Here’s a word of warning though; if as a paying customer, you want to return to a previous room to check out something again, you will be subjected to the flailing arms of the ‘guards’, pointing in the opposite direction.  As for the art, the early paintings gave me hope as a writer of yarns and indeed would give anyone in the formative years of their talents hope that, contrary to what is offered by so many galleries across this great incontinent of Europe, namely that ‘Voila!’, Picasso was born with this mature gift; born not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but with a very fine Hog’s hair bristle brush in his hand! 

Some early portraits were encouraging, along with a few landscapes.  It appeared to me that Picasso knew what he wanted to express or portray, but the painterly skills hadn’t caught up with the imagination yet.  The pigment was quite fumbled over the surface and lacked a finer display of control.  I was chuffed with myself for having come to this fine critique of his skills, but in my superior moment forgot that he was 14 or 15 at the time!  But I was right!  Along with this perceptive moment I also realised that he was much better at larger scale stuff like, ‘Science and Charity’, 1897, ‘Mountain Landscape’, from 1896, or ‘First Communion’, dated 1896. 

It is around these years that we see the evidence of the skills of the young Pablo Ruiz Picasso being honed by his formal training at the La Guarda Institute and later at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid.  His formal studies of men with unkempt genitalia (no dear reader, I know foreign languages are difficult, but this word is not to be confused with the Italian National Airline), reveal a change in his application technique, his mastery of the pigment; his painterly realisation of vision and technique. 

The Young Picasso knew what interested him visually, how to frame a landscape or rooftop view, he knew what excited him, but at times the execution was a tad lacking in dexterity.  I realise I’m not meant to say or write such things, but hey, I’m a Northerner and not used to the finer cultural airs and graces. 

I reflected upon this and thought it is a bit like me when I try to write something; the plots are there (landscape), the characters are defined (portraits), I know what I want to say, but sometimes the words come out in the wrong order or lack the correct nuance, ‘a tad lacking in dexterity’.  Gradually though I think I’m learning how to write a good story.  Language in any landscape, any location can be tricky.  In the gallery I didn’t have the language to let the guards know what I was up to.  This makes me think of my current job mentoring artists, who confessèdly struggle to find the visual metaphors, the language to say something from their own perspective, from within their own tradition, rather than utilise the visual and conceptual language of nihilism; the great yawn of a gap in contemporary Post Maudlinism.  There are many reasons for this and the topic is not really right for consideration here, a later article perhaps?  Suffice it to say, to articulate visually or linguistically one needs ‘language’.  If the visual and conceptual language is inchoate, then the art will probably exude the same quality.

Here we will leave this enchanting story.  I'll return in Part Two and look at a visit, later that day, to a cinema and draw the analogy of subtitle and propaganda!  Geoff