The Dead Geranium of St.Valentine

Renowned post-WW2 German painter Georg Baselitz’s new series of paintings Mrs Lenin and the Nightingale (quite brilliant, actually) at the White Cube. Oh, what a coincidence the gallery is in Mason’s Yard. Has the masonry dust settled? I don’t think so. Where’s the Tracey Emin banner to say FUCK the WHITE CUBE. (Hardly a public thoroughfare so very hard to give much offence (did anyone see her FUCK on the front of The Guardian G2 section years ago? – you think we live in a democracy with ‘freedom of speech’. Dream on. No wonder Damien Hirst gave up on that gallery and auctioned his collection at Sothebys. On another blizzardy snowy wintry London night (Thursday), the White Cube pretended to be ‘one of the people’ inviting artists etc to a ‘Private View’ serving them bottles of beer outside (as they’ve always done) while at the same time having a roped off ‘lift to paradise’ for VIP’s. It’s not ‘envy’ they’re creating just sheer bloody hatred of hypocrisy. You can get away with it on a balmy summer evening (though that’s getter rarer and rarer in London) but not when the sleet starts howling outside and you present a show called Mrs Lenin and the Nightingale. By all means have an invitation private view (totally your prerogative) but don’t let ‘le plebs’ stand in the freezing cold at the same time without them even eating cake!!!!!! It’s called the 1st amendment in the United States of America. And Senate Committees there aren’t the whitewash of U.K. variety – they like honest people who’ve worked hard for their money and reputation not slackers and sleazeballs. Such a good show Herr Baselitz.

The Tate Modern’s really great new show Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism re-iterates my point. Fantastic and informative (even if you saw Rodchenko at the Hayward and From Russia at the Royal Academy). And following on from my last Hannah Arendt blog argument about the separation of public and private emotion: Rodchenko split from Kandinsky because, as the audio guide confers “line is the the path of progress” vice a vie Kandinsky’s “conveying emotions”. The irony being, of course, that the “abstract art appeal to millions of people” promulgated by Rodchenko was in fact FANTASTIC because it was great art anyway stimulating the mind and the spirit as opposed to Rodchenko’s intention of (i.e. the “zero of form” Black-on-Black (1918) series “free from personality and emotion”. In 1920 Rodchenko declared “the death of painting...easel painting as the last remnant of ‘bourgeois society’. “In the BBC’s Question Time on Saturday night, Liberty’s Director Shami Chakrabarti ‘got emotional’ when opposing the government’s rep Transport Minister Geoff Hoon on the recent High Court terrorist suspect ruling. Quite rightly she lauded the fact that she was emotional. Five years ago at the LSE Shami. Remember? Nothing’s got any better.

Rodchenko is quoted as not initially liking the ‘bourgeois’ Popova? Come the revolution he liked her more. No accounting to the ‘emotional’ female form that also wanted to be a successful artist I presume? In the final Workers Club room one can sit and read or play chess – childlike in its bright big colours engendering productivity for your parents. “Rational structures that can be put in service of the State” says the audio guide. I don’t think the British ‘state’ wants to consider my rational structures? By the way Mr Transport Minister, my tube line (District) was fucked all day on Tuesday and tonight (Thursday) so is the Jubilee Line. You’ve treated the denizens (particularly of Richmond) with absolute contempt over the years. NEW LABOUR = NEW VOMIT. There’s my piece of conceptual art. Come on Miss Emin. Put the banner up.You know it’s all true. Come on Lily Allen. And as Jon Stewart from The Daily Show bravely trumpeted on air last year: FUCK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!

And well done Mickey Rourke on your BAFTA for The Wrestler (and Optimum for UK releasing it). The world hasn’t changed a bit in 15 years Mickey. But at least you’ve earner a bit of respect and money – more than do most of the poor fucking miserable cunts and cunises in our arts professions!!!!!! I’ll be in your Don Quixote Sir Terry Gilliam – I know what’s inside the windmill, atop the windmill, underneath the windmill and it isn’t Sir Elton John singing Candle in the Wind that’s for fucking sure, it’s a little wizened Wizard of Oz wielding a dead geranium: WE CAN defeat IT ‘Sir Terry’. Let the ‘people’ have tulips – but if they get greedy, they only have themselves to blame if the petals start dropping off. As we know, Rodchenko was later rewarded for his talent and creative contribution to the revolution by being relegated to photographing circuses by comrade Stalin. Luckily Popova died gracing the high wire of Russian Constructivist art in 1924 without a final ignominy.