Tim Robson 31/12/2019 Tim Robson 31/12/2019

Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville

Is art preference an indication of character? What do the paintings or photos that we place on our walls say about how we perceive ourselves? About how we wish to be perceived by others?

For almost as long as I can remember, I have placed pictures on my walls. Blue tac, pins; nothing seemed to be framed back in the day. What I liked, I stuck up, starting with posters of football teams, Elvis, The Beatles, leading - from 16 onwards - to real 6*4 pictures from my own life - mug shots freeze framed into vanishing history. Hilariously - it now seems - I also pinned up letters from cabinet ministers and MPs (I collected MP’s signatures like others might popstars or film icons).

What posters did I have on my university dorm room walls? I was most proud of a large (and expensive) black and white print of Robert Doisneau’s “Le Baiser de l’hotel de Ville”. Although the photo was taken in March 1950 for Life magazine, Doisneau had in the late 80’s sanctioned the image to be rereleased in poster form. Not long after, I saw it in Brighton (Virgin Megastore? HMV? Athena?) and immediately liked it. So I bought it and up it went on my Sussex University dorm room wall.

How cool was I?

I probably thought I was just as cool as the guy kissing the girl in the photo. But in reality I was definitely more like the the guy in the beret unwittingly walking past the lovers just as the photo was being taken! Actually, entre nous, I read some story that this stereotypical French mec was an Irishman called Bert on a motorcycling tour of Europe who randomly happened to be in Paris that day. Who knows? Even the identity of the couple kissing was firstly, shrouded in mystery and then secondly, disputed in the courts. Turns out they were both actors / models and were paid for this semi staged tableau.

But why does this photo call to me even now?

Well, it’s not the voyeurism, the thrilling sense that we are encroaching on the lovers’ private moment. The angle of the shot from the cafe table looking outwards suggests a photo illicitly taken, grabbed furtively. Perhaps the photographer had his camera on the table and clicked the button at the perfect moment or maybe he was pretending to reset his lens and snuck a shot. Some may like this aspect of stolen moments but I always thought the mise en scene a little too perfect to be a lucky shot; it is - and was - artfully staged.

Is it the sense of time and place? A fleeting glimpse of world now gone reflecting back at us through the camera? That’s closer. Like children running after a balloon floating above Montmartre , or policemen in caps and capes directing jaunty deux chevaux around the Arc de Triomphe, the picture documents a Paris remembered but lost. This type of reportage of daily life is what Doisneau is best known for. I have a marvellous and chunky photo book of his Paris shots - during and just after the war - which detail life on the streets and in the bars. Smiling faces gaze back at me, so sure, so real but so impermanent.

Or is it the picture of young love, so carefree, so intense, before life intrudes and ennui gradually chokes off the heady dopamine? This feeling never lasts and is as fleeting as a freeze frame from a video; a frozen moment captured out of time and pulled roughly to the fore. This picture captures the apex of young love, in Paris no less, and as such it represents an ideal of something for which we all search. I know people who are ever tumbling into the vortex of new love, always looking for that elusive high, ever disappointed when it never lasts. I also know people who continually think past the sale and so, to avoid the fall, avoid the climb and never experience the heights.

It’s all our pasts and all our dreams, a once and future representation of humanity. And I think it represents optimism and that, following all the words, is why this picture is on my wall.

Post Script

I don’t know what happened to the poster. I don’t believe it survived the 1980’s. Why it was discarded, is lost in time, just like the Paris of 1950. However, I have re-bought the print and it is once again featured prominently chez-Robson amongst the numerous Hoppers. That feels right somehow.

Updated and amended from 2018

Tim Robson 29/10/2019 Tim Robson 29/10/2019

Dessine-moi un mouton

La vieux port - Honfleur. Picture TR. Notice the light?

I read once - sometime ago - that Impressionist artists loved the quality of the light in Honfleur, Normandy. The way it arrives sharply from the estuary, dapples on the water, shards through the slate tiled buildings. I think my photograph (above) of the old harbour might actually demonstrate this.

Yes dear readers, we’re into one of Tim’s infrequent forays into art criticism. But, like some overfed, underbred Yorkshireman holding forth after several pints of frothy ale and a chicken madras, “I know what I like.”* The rest of this article may be a bit rough and ill-focused. Bit like Impressionism, in fact.

Normandy plays an important role in the development of impression art. Impressionists, when they weren’t trying to get unemployed actresses to take their clothes off for ‘life studies’, liked to paint out of doors - en plein air - and so light, and the quality of it, was really important. When I was younger I used to claim I liked impressionist artists. It was fashionable. However, as my tastes have matured and become designedly my own, I’m less enamoured these days. I prefer a more literal approach to painting which can then be interpreted.

My notes from Honfleur are a little more damning - as befitting being written in a bar “Impressionism seems to be an artist forgetting how to paint and covering this with obfuscation and swirls.”

Yes, I’ve just had a short break in Normandy. Honfleur is where one of the godfathers of impressionism, Eugene Bodin, was born. There’s a pretty good museum in the town dedicated to his work and other Impressionists. Extolling the light thereabouts, Bodin dragged a coterie of young men in the latter part of the nineteenth century to this part of France. Men like Claude Monet. And together they painted - and repainted - seascapes, beaches, harbours and buildings, of Honfleur and other towns along the Côte Fleurie. Outside and capturing the light, you see.

So, wearing my polo neck sweater, pea coat and artistic flat cap, I visited the Eugene Bodin musée in Honfleur and the somewhat grander musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Both have large Impressionist collections. Frankly, I’m all Pissaro’d and Sisley’d out. I had the freedom to be slow, to be quick, to linger over paintings, to pass by those that don’t interest me (basically fruit and biblical allegories). Both galleries are worth a visit. Both have non Impressionistic paintings.

One thing I noticed though. Everyone who holds a painting stick seems to have had a go at rendering The Bell Tower in Honfleur. Hell me too… So let’s compare Monet and Robson shall we? First up Claude:-

Not bad Monet - bit squiggly for my tastes though. More bell-end than bell tower.

Now me… I literally did the drawing opposite in 30 seconds. I bet Monet took days to do his misjudged dab-fest. Piece of piss this art game.

But the gods of talent asked me to choose between art and literary fame. I chose both and so got neither. However, some vestiges of skill still remain. More in the written word than the art world to be honest but - I’m available for commissions. I don’t charge much.

Same goes for my gigalo skills.

So, what pictures would I recommend from those I saw?

The monumental Le Martyre de Sainte Agnes - Joseph Court 1864 (shown above in Rouen, picture TR). Clearly the Roman theme attracted me. Diocletian was one of the better emperors but became a bit of a bastard towards the Christians in his final years.

Place de la Haut-Vielle Tour a Rouen - Guiseppe Canella 1824.

Rouen Cathedral. Grey - Claude Monet. This one grew on me. As it walked way from it, the indistinct shapes became whole and I - for once - got impressionism.

Hetraie a La Côte de Grâce - Eugene Bodin (can’t find this online). One of his better ones. Can’t remember it though. This is a great article, isn’t it?

Francois Louise Francious - Les Netres de La Côte de Grâce (can’t find this online.) I’ve decided I like pictures of tress. In particular, I like pictures of trees in Autumn.

Finally, one of my favourite French songs - Draw me a sheep (Dessine-Moi Un Mouton)

* Actually, digression alert, I was born in Yorkshire. Can’t do the accent though. When I try it sounds like some generic ‘trouble at t’mill’ version of a Northern accent soft southerners do to entertain themselves with at posh dinner parties when the subject of Brexit voters come up.

Tim Robson 09/10/2018 Tim Robson 09/10/2018

Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville

Is art preference an indication of character? What do the paintings or photos that we place on our walls say about how we perceive ourselves? How we wish to be perceived by others?

For almost as long as I can remember, I have placed pictures on my walls. Blue tac, pins; nothing seemed to be framed back in the day. What I liked, I stuck up, starting with posters of football teams, Elvis, The Beatles, leading - from 16 onwards - to real 6*4 pictures from my life to - hilariously it now seems - letters from cabinet ministers and MPs (I collected MP’s signatures like others might popstars or film icons).

How cool was I?

I probably thought I was just as cool as the guy kissing the girl in the photo. But in reality I was definitely more like the the guy in the beret unwittingly walking past the lovers just as the photo was being taken! Actually, I read some story that this stereotypical French mec was an Irishman called Bert on a motorcycling tour of Europe who randomly happened to be in Paris that day. Who knows? Even the identity of the couple kissing was firstly, shrouded in mystery and then secondly, disputed. Turns out they were both actors / models and were paid for this semi staged tableau.

But why does this photo call to me?

It’s all our pasts and all our dreams, a once and future representation of humanity.

Post Script

I don’t know what happened to the poster. I don’t believe it survived the 1980’s. Why it was discarded, is lost in time, just like Paris in 1950 or perhaps even the young guy who bought the poster originally (pictured below in the following blog post).

Tim Robson 20/09/2016 Tim Robson 20/09/2016

Into the Hopper

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”

— Edward Hopper

Although my writing often uses allusion and metaphor my most common technique is reference. The deliberate triggering of emotion or intellect by forms of words and experiences with which the reader may be familiar, perhaps unknowingly. Sometimes my references pass people by, but they are there, hidden beneath the surface, like buried treasures. Music, films, history, ancient texts, The Bible nestle side-by-side. My prose is deceptively simple but is buttressed by those that went before.

Visually, I'm quite literal. I could be dismissed - and often am - as hating all art that doesn't have a semblance of reality. But this literalism can hide artifice and subtext (pre-Raphaelites, anyone?). The framing, the subject, the angle, the deliberate manipulation of scene, emotion and place that an artist consciously puts into a painting is as important as the form.*

So, in this spirit, let me introduce my favourite artist, Edward Hopper. In my lounge, along with framed LP covers, two Hoppers hang, facing each other. On one wall is:-

This is faced by:-

Within these two you get pretty much quintessential Hopper. The very strong sense of place, mood, of images being presented full on but still hiding much. I mean, what is the usherette thinking in the Movie Theatre picture? But also, it reveals the human element behind life which I like. It's the deliberate panning back in order to highlight the trivial. All life is affected by mood, emotion, secrets. There is surface and there is stuff going on underneath. Hopper is about these things. It's not happy.

So Hopper is a realist but his paintings always convey a mood, hint at a story, scratch the surface of deep emotions. These are the sorts of paintings where you can sit in front of them in an art gallery, scratch your chin and speculate on what the artist meant. 'Gas' pictured above is very much like this. A solitary garage on a little used road, closes for the night as the shadows from the evening and the forest close in. It's lonely, suggestive, oppressive even,

Let me give you a couple more favourites:

I suppose an early fore-runner of Nighthawks. Who is she? Why is she on her own? Questions. Questions.

The grass, the sinister trees again. The man and woman pensive (argument, loss, waiting something), the dog!

But I've entertained you enough, I feel. Hopper's my man with the brushes. But it's a personal thing. Shared by millions.

So long, farewell, auf weidersehn.

Tim

* I could bore for Britain on my views of the duty of the artist. Or the freewill of the artist. How selection and viewpoint is as much a part of the artistic palette as skill, technique, form. But also serendipity.

RIP Charmain Carr who died this week. Remember her this way. I think somewhere we're all 16 going on 17.