Cyanotype workshop

My Cyanotype workshop at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation, Xiamen University, China. 27 June until 10 July 2024

After a short a discussion with the class about Henri Bergson's philosophy of time and memory, I introduced the students to the cyanotype photo-print process. The discovery of, and experimentation with this process was coupled with searching journeys by the students into meaningful and significant photographic imagery, from their pasts - images that stimulated and evoked the recurrence of personal memories. We attempted too, to consider the time taken to produce, expose and assemble these images as an investigation into 'how we are spending our time'. The idea of the poetic visual chronicle as basic model will be transformed into assemblages and collages of cloud-like forms. The emphasis is away from the conceptual, away from the explanatory, into poetic forms and formulations. There were be no artists statements, only poems, written in Chinese by the students.

Incidents from the Life of John the Baptist Siena

This painting by an unknown master from the 13th century. The Life of John the Baptist. Pinacoteca, Siena, Italy.

My Photos.

Julie van der Vaart

A cyanotype, from the series 'The Dance'. Julie and I are in conversation with the aim to produce a joint exhibition together is 2025.

"There is no finality, no purpose, in this endless dance of atoms. We, just like the rest of the natural world, are one of the many products of this infinite dance. The product of an accidental combination. Nature continues to experiment with forms and structures; and we, like the animals, are the products of a selection which is random and accidental, over the course of eons of time. Our life is a combination of atoms, our thoughts are mad e up of thin atoms, our dreams are the products of atoms, our hope s and our emotion s are written in a language formed by combinations of atoms, the light which we see is comprised of atoms which bring us images. The seas are made of atoms, . . as are our cities, and the stars." - Carlo Rovelli on Democritus' theory of atoms, Reality is not what it seems. Quoted by Julie van der Vaart

Opening at Gangurin Corridor Gallery Reykjavik

Opening and artist's talk at Gangurin/Corridor Gallery, Reykjavik. 25 January 2024

My Cutie Puzzle

Einar Jónsson

A visit to the Einar Jónsson museum in Reykjavik, 27 January 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar_J%C3%B3nsson

Einar Jónsson (11 May 1874 – 18 October 1954) was an Icelandic sculptor, born in Galtafell, a farm in southern Iceland. Wikipedia tells us this. A visit to the museum in Reykjavik dedicated to his work revealed this remarkable (some would say bizarre) plaster work. Drenched in early 20th century spiritual philosophies, and as my artist friend Helgi Fridjonnson told me, very influenced by Swedenborgian ideas.

Image with Einar Jónsson blog Thom Puckey

George Segal

George Segal (November 26, 1924 – June 9, 2000)

an exhibition of unsold works by George Segal at the Templon Gallery in New York, October 2023

George Segal

George Segal (November 26, 1924 – June 9, 2000)

an exhibition of unsold works by George Segal at the Templon Gallery in New York, October 2023

Pierre Bonnard

This wonderful painting by Pierre Bonnard, seens and photographed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, during my visit there October 2023

Hiroshi Sugimoto

The photographer whom I most admire, soon to get a big exhibition in London. See link:

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/hiroshi-sugimoto-time-machine?fbclid=IwAR2aov3EJL61_Il0y493Cq8Dda0TVKesBYGpTYOyChTxGQ1cHqben1e_V5A

Image with Hiroshi Sugimoto blog Thom Puckey

Paulo Roversi

Another photographer whom I admire greatly.

https://byzantinemysteries.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/natalia-vodianova-photographed-by-paolo-roversi.jpg

an 8x10 inch polaroid!

Image with Paulo Roversi blog Thom Puckey

Alix Cléo Roubaud

Alix Cléo Roubaud 1952-1983

©Alix Cléo Roubaud

20March 2023

New photos on the drying table

new photos from the 27 February session

Image with 20March 2023 blog Thom Puckey

Detail

A detail of a much larger photo

This is a detail of a much larger photograph. The lighting is a double event, like the taking of the photo with a Mamiya RZ67 is an event in itself. The whole production is a chain of events. Viewing a photo is an event in itself.

Poetry of Force

A sculpture in development.

The preliminary version in clay of a new sculpture in development. Provisional title: The Poetry of Force - or - The Alchemy of Force.

Image with Poetry of Force blog Thom Puckey

René Girard

Violence and the Sacred

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_the_Sacred

This book has really caught my attention.

Sailing to Byzantium

By William Butler Yeats

Sailing to Byzantium

By William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Byzantium

By William Butler Yeats

Byzantium

By William Butler Yeats

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,

Shade more than man, more image than a shade;

For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

May unwind the winding path;

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless mouths may summon;

I hail the superhuman;

I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,

Planted on the starlit golden bough,

Can like the cocks of Hades crow,

Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud

In glory of changeless metal

Common bird or petal

And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,

Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,

Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,

The golden smithies of the Emperor!

Marbles of the dancing floor

Break bitter furies of complexity,

Those images that yet

Fresh images beget,

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Mae Clarke in Frankenstein, 1931

Frankenstein. James Whale. 1931

https://thompuckey.com/oeuvre/136/

Image with Mae Clarke in Frankenstein, 1931 blog Thom Puckey

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon
Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962
Oil on canvas, three panels
198.1 x 144.8 cm, each panel
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 64.1700
© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved

I saw this painting as a photo in a magazine, around 1965/

Image with Francis Bacon blog Thom Puckey

Hans Baldung Grien and me

Encounters with supernatural figures

Hans Baldung Grien: Death and the Maiden. 1517

Image with Hans Baldung Grien and me blog Thom Puckey

Giovanni Bellini's Holy Allegory

My visit to the Galleria degli Uffizi, 3 September 2022

https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/holy-allegory

Image with Giovanni Bellini's Holy Allegory blog Thom Puckey

Julie van der Vaart

From Julie's series 'The Dance'

https://www.julievandervaart.com

Image with Julie van der Vaart blog Thom Puckey

New sculpture in development

A new sculpture in development in my studio.

My photographic activities have temporarily had to make way for this new work in development.

Image with New sculpture in development blog Thom Puckey

2006 <> 2016

2 works

Bringing 2 works together

Image with 2006 <> 2016 blog Thom Puckey

Reindeer Werk with Jean Sellem

September 1975

Photo by Angela Spanswick. Reindeer Werk, Thom Puckey and Dirk Larsen, with gallery holder Jean Sellem in the middle. Galerie St. Petri, Lund, Sweden. September 1975.

Image with Reindeer Werk with Jean Sellem blog Thom Puckey

Paul Nougé

The Subversion of Images

1929-30. Taken with a simple box-camera.

Study in curves

https://thompuckey.com/oeuvre/98/

https://thompuckey.com/oeuvre/131/

Image with Study in curves blog Thom Puckey

Paul Nougé

From: Subversion des Images

First edited and published by Marcel Marien in 1968 in a limited edition of 230 copies, half a year after Paul Nougé’s death, The Subversion of Images is a miniature classic in both the photobook and surrealist canons. It collects Nougé’s notes and photographs from 1929–30 to form a guidebook to the surrealist image. Nougé here outlines his conception of the object and the surrealist approach to it, while also offering an accompaniment to the visual work of his colleague, René Magritte, whose paintings he sometimes titled. How might a tangle of string elicit terror? How might the suppression of an object move one to sentimentality? What is the effect of a pair of gloves on a loaf of sliced bread?