who made the leap
from hunting gathering
to hand prints
bison and antelopes
on the cave wall
and Jackson Pollock
scouring a white canvas
prowling back and forth
waiting to pounce
to lunge at the surface
in stabbing motions
to open wounds
that drip
with colour
John Lyons
Paint that captures
the shape of gestures
memories arrested in space
sinuous as the body is curved
And he thinks too
of the unbound energies
they expended
and of the shapes
that their bodies made
when they came together
the arc of a breast
a mouth agape
the slope of a thigh
or an angled elbow
Form and the absence of it
light and the absence of it
colour and the absence of it
love and the absence of it
and under a wrathful sky
their union and the absence of it
John Lyons
Momentary flames
a brief fire that flickers
in the mouth of a cave
a time for reflection
and for expression
Pollock’s hand prints
on the wall
the colours mixed
with intention
a scheme of things
in the mind
deliberately executed
Not to leave a record
but simply to tell
of how it is
of how it was
that day when we walked
through the rain
or when we parked our bikes
and stood in the shadow
of Chartres cathedral
and admired its beauty
Days that we will never forget
until the end of our days
and our love held
in the memory
John Lyons
I’m a poet and a patriot
but I sometimes paint
though I make no claims
for my artistic skills
I simply try to lay down
the colours and shapes
of the words I carry around
in my head along with
whatever energies
I can bring to bear
If I was a painter
I would strive to be
a de Kooning or
a Jackson Pollock
or wherever the action is
but there’s no hope
of that so relax
it’s Saturday
and my mind’s on
the walk we are about
to take over the river to Spitalfields
to try a Philadelphia
cheese steak sandwich
and on Sunday
I will be watching the Superbowl
and cheering on the Eagles
even though I have
only the vaguest
understanding of the game :
it’s just not my game
John Lyons
Follow the trail of paint
the boundless
shapeless energy
the thin line
that speeds Pollock on
to reveal his inner likeness
a see-through heart
a tangled coil of veins
with the ceaseless
coming and going
of the courageous mind
addicted to freedom
He of the multitude
perpetually present
in the scene of selves
and just imagine
the sensual pulse
that flicks the wrist
all colours fused
in passionate exhalation
compositions that disturb
the veils of dishonesty
burying them beneath
a bed of his truth
for this truly is
beauty
in the eye
of the beholder
John Lyons
This poem appeared earlier today in a slightly different version.
When I think of Pollock’s
‘Number One’ I think
of Frank O’Hara’s digression
________________________
both are balancing acts
on a tightrope
and in Pollock one sees
the twisted narrative
almost impossible
to unravel as he tiptoes
across the ravine
on a perfect day for it
as Frank writes :
warm for winter
cold for fall—
do you see ?
John Lyons
When I was a child
all the talk was of
how to grow the best roses
and what types of soil
make for a better lawn
I remember those roses
with their savage thorns
their soft petals
dripping with morning dew
but nobody told me
anything about the challenges
I would face in later life
I was not a sickly child
and I learned most things
with relative ease
I played out on the streets
my feet dragging home the dust
only when the sun set
Life seemed in those days
to be administered
by perfect hands and reality
was representational
Had someone shown me
a Jackson Pollock
I might have had an inkling
of what was to come
No I am not ill today
or any other day
not even tired
simply perplexed
by the mystery of the stars
scintillating above
an empty ocean
and yet I know exactly
what I need to make
a perfect day and so do you
so why don’t we ?
John Lyons
So Sunday morning I wake at six o’clock as per usual and peek out the window. Can see it’s a blustery day and I feel that the grey clouds slopping about overhead are ganging up on me, just waiting for me to step outside. Does not bode well! Still, intrepid as ever, it’s shower, shave, gallo pinto for breakfast and out the door, notebook in hand, optimism in my heart. Head down to the tracks and off to London town in search of Pollocks. Readers may recall my previous Sunday visit to Tate Britain. No Pollocks there, but plenty of other first rate objets d’art so not a wasted journey by any means. This Sunday, it’s Tate Modern, gotta be Pollocks there, surely. Get to Blackfriars on the Tube and as I hit the street all hell breaks loose up above, cats, dogs, anything the weather can throw at me, so I arrive at the old power station drenched to my Wilson socks, shake it off like a dog and enter the monumental arthouse, nip up to the second floor and ask one of the attendants: “Where’s the Pollocks?” She’s very sweet, about 5’ 2”, glasses, dark auburn hair, just a tad overweight, but that’s her business not mine, and the bearer of bad news: “Sorry, my love, they’re all in Tate Liverpool for a big exhibition.” My face is now a pool on the Tate Modern floor. “What? In Liverpool? O for God’s sake! I’ve come all this way!” “Sorry, my love. But they’ll be back sometime soon, second week of September, if I’m not mistaken.” “But I wanted to write a piece about them, I’ve got a blog.” She gives me a long, hard, charitable stare. “Sorry, ducks. Can’t be helped.”
Resilience, Battle of Britain spunk. I must have some of that somewhere. So, yeah, sure enough, I thank the girl for her kindness and consideration and traipse off down a few aisles, take a butcher’s at a few Dalis and Picassos, nothing to write home about and then I come across someone who just might be the ticket. Zhang Enli, never heard of him but his series of still lifes grabbed me by the . . . . Anyway, two and two together, cats and dogs, leaking roofs, why not buckets, memories of the Great Dartford Flood of 1968 when the branch of Woolworth’s was up to its ears and staff were obliged to enter the store (I kid you not) by boat, and I think “Eureka, I’ll write about Zhang Enli. Try to turn him into a household name. Do my bit at least.”
Born in Jilin, China in 1965, a teacher at the Arts & Design lnstitute of Donghua University, Zhang Enli currently lives and works in Shanghai. Doesn’t tell you much but the guy is good and he’s had exhibitions all over the shop.
Art is about focus, the mind homing in on something or some emotion before transferring that energy into an artistic product, notes on a stave, steps on a dance floor, words in the mouth of an actor, paint on a canvas, you get the idea, from the mind through the body into or onto whatever is the chosen medium. For a painter, Enli in this case, there are so many options, so many considerations, so many choices, oils, acrylics, board, canvas, grape stems, representational or abstracted, it’s always ‘make your mind up’ time. Art is mind on matter, even if that matter is the thin air fattened by a few Beethoven chords. Long and the short is that our friend Zhang has a technique and an eye that Pablo would have been proud of. Word of warning: No good admiring it on a computer screen, or worse still a crappy iPad. You gotta go and see for yourself the delicacy of the brushwork, the subtlety of the colours, the perfection of the composition. It raises the humble bucket into an icon, but the icon is dedicated to our humanity, to the essential ordinariness of all of us, our common bond in the occasionally very damp and gloomy human condition. Art is elevation. It makes us feel good and alive, and it is not a luxury, it is oxygen to our soul and any attack on the arts, by reducing curriculum time in schools, or failing to fund local arts, national arts, whatever, is an attack on the species. Forget global warming, the battle for the survival of the human race is an artistic battle. Still, that’s enough from me on my hobbyhorse. Uncle Toby would be proud of me, de gustibus non est disputandum. . . and so on and so forth. Get along to the gallery and get a load of it for yourselves.
Meanwhile, busy busy busy. It’s still chucking it down outside when I head back to Blackfriars and I’m sitting on the train bound for Denmark Hill when the blog editor comes on the mobile blower to say we’ve had another sweet comment on Jonah and Anna-Belle, our running soap, from dear old Molly Rosenberg. She’s such a darling, melts my heart every time. A ray of sunshine on a godawful day!
Note to myself: must get more sleep and slow down!
