Dave Whatt: 2

Hi all,

The website listed in his bog entry from 7 June 2010 is incorrect. His MySpace pages seemed to have vanished.

I am currently following his daily blog at http://davewhatt.wordpress.com/. His music is available on his Soundcloud.


He is also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/DaveWhatt

Dave Whatt

Hull Underground original design Dave Whatt for Remould Theatre Company (no date).

It is hard to categorize the Hull-based creative Dave Whatt. He is an accomplished Blues guitarist, a multi-instrumentalist musician and artist, set designer, photographer, graphic designer, illustrator and writer. He is avant-garde, anti- avant-garde, an anti-poet and, he will hate me for this, a poet. I like to think of him as a polyartist, for he is “a master of several unrelated arts” (Kostelanetz, 2001, p. 486) as well as many related ones.

Above: A kid for two farthings by Dave Whatt. This drawing was I assumed, based on a still from the film of the same name directed by Carol Reed in 1955, I believe now however that it is a based on this book cover for the novel of the same name of which the film was an adaptation, written by Wolf Mankowitz:

No doubt Dave Whatt owns a copy.

'Acting' by Dave Whatt

I am not sure about the source for the above picture or the date.

As you can see many of the works here are representational. However there is plenty of his work that I would describe as abstract, recalling the “landscapes” of Yve Tanguy. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of these works. The surreal nature of such works and of his writing made him the ideal founding member of the Hull Surrealist League.

Dave Whatt's website contains examples of his own compositions: music and poetry and a list of his diverse influences that include early nineties rave:

The Plasmatics:

Captain Beefheart:

and

The Cramps:

amongst others! All great bands and artists!

Take a look at http://www.myspace.com/davewhatt

Kostelanetz, R. (2001) Dictionary of The Avant-Gardes, New York and London: Routledge

Fun, Music and Nostalgia!

After Mike mentioned Sugar in the previous post that included Husker Du I thought I would add this video for the Sugar song Tilted from the EP Beaster:




Interestingly the video is co-directed by the photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps known to me via Q magazine and other journals (NME perhaps) and as an early photographer of REM. She is now a Professor of Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta Georgia.

I have no info about John Bruce, the other director of the video. He could be very famous, I have no idea! He seems to have directed other Sugar videos like If I can't Change your Mind.

Fun, Music and Nostalgia!

Well I put this in because well, the Guy Called Gerald track in previous blog is associated with the Hacienda and I think that this Nova Mob (Grant Hart ex Husker Du) track has a Manchester vibe about it.

Admiral Of The Sea en Yahoo! Video

Fun, Music and Nostalgia!

As I write my reflective piece on my practice and the internet being so accessible (duh!) I am getting nostalgia pangs. So I decide to listen to some music. I think well what have I not listened to for a long time? My choice I thought of videos were rather random! I was oddly struck by the aesthetic similarities between the Husker Du’s Could You Be the One (hardcore punks turn into power popsters) and A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray. What was it about the late eighties and these bright colours? I like the use of abstractions here. The animations are like the work of Len Lye and Norman McLaren. Amazing! Well as one underground movement draws to a close a new one emerges!

Husker Du:



A Guy Called Gerald:




I had to include the "original" mix:

Tracy and the Plastics

— Excerpts from the performance titled "World" from 2004.







I like Jared's description of "them" as a cross between Bikini Kill and Devo!

Civilisation 9: The Pursuit of Happiness: 4

  

By the time Watteau died, in 1721, the Rococo style was beginning to effect decoration and architecture. It became an international style ten years later, spreading across Europe in a similar fashion as early 15^th Century Gothic.  Rococo was the visual equivalent of the experience of joy and the visual articulation of pleasure.

Civilisation 9: The Pursuit of Happiness: 2

      

This part of episode 9 looks at the musical traditions of Germany: Bach’s music which grew out of the Italian style and the other musical tradition that came out of Dutch and German churches. German baroque architecture is also discussed. 

Civilisation 9: The Pursuit of Happiness: 1

I put the first episode of Civilisation up on my blog because it showed the fragility of cultures and societies. It showed us some very interesting cultural artefacts. I suppose the ones that seemed more important to me were the examples of Celtic design in the Book of Kells. 

I was tempted to try and upload all of series, but I think that would be madness. So, it was best to be selective. I thought that I would race through the centuries and series and look at episode nine and the 18^th Century.  In the “The Pursuit of Happiness” Kenneth Clark reflects on the nature of 18th century music, the work of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. He discusses the painter Watteau and considers that some of its qualities are found in Rococo architecture. In 18^th century music “- its melodious flow, its complex symmetry, its decorative invention- are reflected in the architecture; but not its deeper appeal to the emotions” (Clark, K, 1969 p. 221). The discussion of the ornate design of Rococo is fascinating, because Clark makes the argument that “the Rococo style has a place in civilisation” (1969, p.221). Clarke complains that “serious minded used to call it shallow and corrupt, chiefly because it was intended for pleasure; well the founders of the American Constitution who were far from frivolous, thought fit to mention the pursuit of happiness as a proper aim of mankind, and even if ever this aim has been given visible form it is in Rococo architecture- the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of love” (Clark, K, 1969 p. 221).

Clark does discuss the style that preceded Rococo, the classical style that was a symbol of a rigid and centralised authoritarian government. Classicism was, is the architecture of bureaucrats, “gifted civil servants” and not craftsmen- “grandeur achieved through the authoritarian state” and is the “architecture of a great metropolitan culture” (Clark, K, 1969 p. 221). There is in classicism a coldness and a “certain inhumanity”, that we see inform the architecture of power in the 20^th Century and beyond. The differences between classicism and the rococo recall an earlier observation by Clark about Greek classicism. It is, Clark argues, “static and cold” in comparison with the mobility of the symbol of the Atlantic man, the Viking ship (Clark, 1969 p.14). 

Sources:
Clark, K (1969) Civilisation: A personal view. London: BBC/J. Murray