"Oh I was very Lucky, London 1944" - Priscilla Thornycroft

When in London last I went down to the Imperial War Museum because, as regulars here will know, war art speaks to me and their collection is the best as they did most of the commissioning. Not much is on display at the moment due to refurbishment but they do have a selection from their collection in an exhibition entitled "The Architecture of War"

A high proportion of the work was made by artists I had previously overlooked or never stumbled across (DIY art history education is good but sometimes it misses out important things). I don't really want to talk about the exhibition today - I'd rather highlight this painting.

Thornycroft spent chunks of the war wandering round London sketching. Not being having a permit, she could easily have ended up in hot water just for that as, not unreasonably, people drawing or photographing damage or even slightly military things were regarded with a lot of suspicion. This picture was a result of these wanderings. It was made in 1977 from memory. Thornycroft wrote to the Imperial War Museum in June this year to tell them a little more about the painting.

"The woman sitting on a chair in the rubble was near the southern end of the footbridge from Charing Cross Underground station... I had just run across the river and saw her sitting in the road drinking tea... all she said was: “Oh I was very lucky.” An old lady from over the road, with a teapot, explained: “She was in the basement when the bomb fell”..."

I really respond to the feel of this picture. There is a perkiness about the smiling lady despite the darkness of her eyes, her head wound, her grey pallor and the fact her hair is still in shock. There is a joy and a thankfulness about her and she strikes me as a counterpoint to the line from Full Metal Jacket: "The dead know only one thing. It is better to be alive." Never has a cup of tea tasted sweeter, or a wooden chair felt more comfortable.

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I've seen this weather somewhere before

I remember last year the Thames was rising violently at Christmas, and come Boxing Day it was sweeping boats away left, right and centre. Its not as extreme this year, but its high and its fast because we've just emerged from a week of outrageous rain. There is one big difference this year though: today I bought a pair of wellies, so I can jomp across the meadows no matter what - and that is a very good thing indeed because the willows take on the most glorious all winter and now I can get up close. Its a very different place in winter, it hardly looks like Southern England at all.

Too many and too few possibilities

Another trip to London, another batch of options. So very many choices, so very much confusion.

I made the mistake of trying Tate Modern again. I find it impossible to engage with the work there. I still can't work out whether it's the building, the curating and hanging or the work. The hanging certainly doesn't help - there is an either an ego competing with the artworks there or maybe the curators simply don't believe that the art is interesting or actually communicates anything so they feel a need to spoon feed the audience with connections between pieces, juxtapose things and place things at strange heights. The rooms are discordant and lacking in rhythm. It must be deliberate but it distracts from the art instead of enhancing it. I'll try again when they finish the extension - the crowds will be spread out a bit more and maybe the quality of light will be different but I'm not optimistic - in recent years there have been signs of curator's egos at Tate Britain too.

Of course, it could be their current emphasis on the surreal as I only really buy into two or three surrealists, or it could even be that I have lost almost all interest in most post pop art art history;-) There has been a strange stagnation towards the end of last century and the beginnings of this, in and around post-modernism. A pursuit of superficial sensation, a tendency towards decontextualisation and cultural imperialism, change for change's sake, celebrity, art as a commodity and brand, a lack of purpose and never-ending cynicism may mean that much blockbuster art, high art and museum art is truly of our time but it will not get me excited. There is a precedent for me taking this broad a swipe - in between the settling down at the end of the Renaissance and Turner's late works, there are only a handful of artists I would get out of bed for. I think I respond most to art which was made in a time of purposeful change - not the technical and compositional stagnation of the Academy and Salon eras, not the sensation chasing search for novelty of today. I will keep checking out contemporary art, and from time to time I will stumble across gems like Kara Walker, or the film I saw the other day - Waste Land - but mostly I'll either be turned away by its superficialness (search Washington Green) its lack of ambition (search Royal Academy Summer Show) or its cynicism. As a result, I'll keep wondering where the hell I fit in to it all!

By contrast, other cultures seem far richer than ours at the moment. Here is a spectacular piece of pottery from the British Museum.

"Large Feather Leaves Bowl" was made in 2013 by Hisono Hitomi in London. She is a Japanese potter, born in one of the traditional pot-making towns. It draws on a truly ancient tradition known as flame pots, and is made from a hand thrown pot which has then 1000 leaves/feathers attached. It is a truly breath taking piece which took six months to make.

The reason I've put it in this post is that perhaps it signposts a way forwards for me. I happen to have been looking at Japanese and Chinese literature as a potential source of work but more to the point I am currently in a fog - I have seen art which has literally changed a little bit of the world (seriously, watch Waste Land), I have seen difficult and engaging art, I have seen art very local to me so backwards and lacking in ambition it hurts, I have seen current high art, so impenetrable and cynical. It has left me in a strange place where I can do nothing because I want to do everything and where I genuinely don't see how I fit into the contemporary art scene and unsure that I want to. Maybe looking out of the tradition of Western art is my best hope. I am part of it so I can't step out of it completely, but I can call on notions and values from the rest of the world and I can retrace my steps back to before the point at which I think we went astray.

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It occurs to me this blog has become a little monochrome lately, misty photos, graphite drawings, paintings of midnight, too much text and some subdued oils. So I prescribe a little Broadway Boogie Woogie!

'Nuff said!