Is that what they call modern art? / Meeting actual people and being a snob / Print: Celestial Landfall

 

Yes, people like Thelma do exist! They did exist when this comic strip panel was created (1952) and still do - so what? It doesn't matter how other people see art...unless they directly hamper any progress you should wish to meke...as in someone important that you meet looks at your art and says 'I like pictures that look like something!' and shows you the door. Why did you want to impress them anyway? They own a gallery? They act as agents for artists? Etc...

When I was a lot younger it would bother me that some people didn't 'understand' art, as in even old-fashioned abstract art. Perhaps I still felt it was a battle to 'win' and worth arguing about. Pah! What a waste of time. People have different opinions and taste. That's all. So what if the Thelmas (and male equivalents) of this world only want pictures that look like something.

Here's a print I made a few days ago:

RTomens 2026

I've been called a snob many times for just knowing what I like and some of those things being 'obscure'. My accusers only saw part of the picture, though. I love Motown records. Snobbish? Hardly. I love old reggae tunes, John Wayne films, Laurel & Hardy and Pop Art. Do any of those signify snobbery?

These days you can find people online with similar taste to you in obscure music, Art, books etc. In a way, it takes the fun out of it, although I did used to pine for like-minded souls before the internet and once found they were seen as rare treasures. It might be that friend of a friend you were introduced to in a bar. That someone in a club. A chance encounter on the tube with someone reading The Ticket That Exploded. 

People who were actual flesh and bone rather than just names on a screen were akin to records, physical vinyl. They meant something other than virtual 'friends' never to be met and streaming music. You had to make an effort to get both. You could touch them, smell them, get a feeling from them via eye-to-eye contact...the record sleeve, the handshake or hug...

(Talking of records, in a charity shop the other day I overheard a young girl tell the shop assistant that she'd just spent fifteen pounds on vinyl, to which the woman (aged around 45) replied 'Do you have a vinyl player?'. A vinyl player?!!! It's a record-player! And the plural of vinyl is vinyl, not 'vinyls'! God that annoys me. Since when did records become 'vinyls'?)

I don't know if young people still go to bars and clubs and discuss music, art and books. It's easy to think that regarding culture this is a lost generation (well, their culture is different, it's largely online). But I often see lots of kids hanging around music venues in Camden so there are still are 'scenes'. I would hope their music annoys their parents but I fear that their parents are 'liberal' and tolerant in that respect. Parents take their kids to festivals nowadays, for god's sake. 

I like to think there are teenagers out there proudly being 'snobbish' about the culture they like; reading obscure books and listening to obscure music. With 'everything' now being available online though, I suspect that any underground scene worthy of the name would have to be either offline, or so miniscule as to avoid attention. It would certainly escape the notice of this old fart.

TTFN

Print art: What Is A Woman Really Worth? / Destroy All Monsters and Mimicking Authenticity / My Soft Need 23 artwork

 

RTomens 2026

Revisiting Destroy All Monsters' artworks and music inspired me to create some prints. I was keen to try and avoid blatant copies, of course, although LJ believes that to be impossible. She, bless her, is oblivious to software program capabilities in that respect. Of course you can click on the 'Grungy Xerox' button to give your images that look. But what look is it? The look of old Xerox technology. Or is it only that? I wonder...because it's not only a look, it's the product of a time, place, technology, attitude etc...a culture. 

In the same way that it would be very hard, I imagine, to recreate the sound of Jamaica circa 1972 (is their an Off-Center Pressing button for that slightly warped and woozy sound - oh and scratches) recreating a visual style that perfectly mimics an old one may, technically, be possible, but I doubt it's so good as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. No, I'm not going to research that.

There are plenty of typewriters fonts available online and I've used a few but to these eyes they still don't look exactly like anything produced on an actual typewriter.  The inherent variation in pressure applied to keys and the resulting different shades of type is absent. Don't tell me, there's a typewriter app that does vary the weight of lettering randomly. Huh! 

The Destroy All Monsters magazine, collected in one volume, is a treasure. Unfortunately, both books are pricey nowadays. Their aesthetic, visually and sonically, is spot on - raw, rock'n'roll. 

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I'm not sure when my eyes stopped communicating properly with my brain but it's a worry, naturally. Why do I ponder this? Well, I bought Soft Need 23 (2020) from Typewriter Jim last year, about 10 months ago - flicked through, shelved it, flicked through again more thoroughly, shelved it and had another look a couple of weeks ago, this time noticing the comic panel joke on page 48...hold on...that's mine! I made that years ago! I think...I'm almost sure, but it takes some recall to say, exactly, so I search my old blog, Include Me Out, and sure enough, there it is. I'm uncredited in SN 23 because by the time they sourced it my name had become detached, I suppose. I don't mind. It was funny, though, that I didn't discover it for months.

Vispo print: Instant Success

Instant Success, RTomens 2026

 

Photographs: Unexpected objects / The Thames at Wapping

 

Unexpected objects found at bus stops. Above, Camden Rd. Below, Bruce Grove, Tottenham.

By the Thames at Wapping.

I found a worn piece of wood which made a nice readymade sculpture.

World War Three / Michael Moorcock / Learn To Draw

'There was nothing more old-fashioned than the speeches of the last members of the Old Guard, the student revolutionaries.' Tasty

Drawing by Mal Dean

Drawing by RTomens

Learn to draw here

Be seeing you

Books: shelf life / The artist's studio / Vispo: What Am I?

 

A photo of part of my studio. I don't have a studio. That's just one of my book shelves. But it is close to where I make art. About four feet away.

Scrolling through Instagram the other day I saw someone's studio. It was extremely tidy. I wondered if a hair on the work surface caused them distress. Their work is also tidy. Very clean. Precise. Measured. So I conclude that the state of an artist's studio may often reflect the nature of their work. Francis Bacon's studio was famously messy. 

Whilst his work couldn't be described as 'messy', I think there are raw, wild, uncontained elements to his paintings which are reflected in the chaos of the studio. Those nightmarish smears...the violent brush strokes. 

Sometimes I wish I had a studio, if only to hold cabinets where my work could be neatly put away. As you know, the kind of work I produce really doesn't demand lots of space. My desk is the crucial item. But even without that, I would only need a space to put the typewriter on or make collages. If I had a studio, would I make larger work? Possibly. But even then, large works can only be shown in galleries and I'm not in love with the idea of gallery shows. I've taken part in a few and was left...underwhelmed. The internet is a better gallery and suits what I do because my work can be scanned and posted.

The other day I decided to type on a page from an old sci-fi magazine. I usually draw on them but have typed before. The art is to make the type a strong element as it battles with the printed word. As usual, I had seen a line which I wanted to be read. The red shape was outlined first, then the mass of type created to fit it. The red ink went on next followed by what's typed onto that. 

What Am I?, RTomens 2026

TTFN

Tony Cragg at the Lisson Gallery / Vispo-collage: And Reveal / Talking about your art & talking bollocks / Sex Pistols

 

Reflections at an exhibition - Tony Cragg at the Lisson Gallery. We sat on the low white wall in the courtyard and ate some cake. LJ thought the sculptures would be easy to steal, looking at how low the boundary wall was. But we wondered how heavy they were. Too heavy to lift? And how would they be sold? 

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And Reveal, RTomens 2025

Another collage of old vispo pieces, this time against type on a photo of material found in the street. Sometimes I would like to say more about my work but perhaps that is only the effect of the idea that artists should say/be able to say something about their work - something...profoundly illuminating, perhaps? But I am not in the Art world. I am not in the academic world, that's for sure. Do I play dumb, like Warhol, or am I really dumb? 

All I can talk about right now...no...not even talk, only mention, is the poor performance by Chelsea last night in losing to Arsenal with barely a shot on target. That and the fact that this morning, at 11.04, my mind is asleep and my eyelids yearning to close so I stare into space frequently, out the window at the rare occurrence of sunlight illuminating the houses opposite and really I should be outside in that sunlight, preferably on a clifftop with the cool sea breeze on my face instead of hunched over this keyboard in the city...

Someone leaves a comment on my FB post of a recent artwork but it is an obscure (to me) reference which I don't understand, possibly because I am dumb, or because he is a lot younger and is saying something only under-25s would understand. Which reminds me, when I said 'bollocks' as we walked down the road the other day I wondered if Young People would even know what that means/refers to. It feels like such a 70s word, even though I think it's still commonly used (amongst men) today in the UK. Americans never say 'bollocks', do they?  Now I think of the Sex Pistols album, Never Mind The Bollocks and realise that it must, to some degree, have introduced the word to a previously ignorant world, although not to the extent that it then became part of their language. The thought of people all around the world puzzling over the word in 1977 amuses me.

I presume it's common to talk bollocks about either someone else's art (hello critics!) or your own. That's a stupid sentence. 

I mean...

...artspeak is widely recognised as bollocks and artists either willingly puff up their work with pretentious bollocks or are encouraged to do so by galleries. Perhaps I'm envious of their vocabularies being greater than mine, along with their ability to concoct clever-sounding sentences in relation to their art.

Or perhaps I'm just...a...lazy sod!

Vispo: You're Mad! / Peter Finch typewriter poems book update / James Sallis RIP

You're Mad!, RTomens 2026

It's a mad, mad, mad etc world, yes. Hasn't it always been so? 

Each side of every political divide views the other as mad.

Bowie sang he 'would rather stay here with all the madmen / Than perish with the sad men roaming free' (All The Madmen). Perhaps it is better to be mad...

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I've updated the Peter Finch Typewriter Poems book page having discovered that the images had disappeared. See some pages from this little gem here. 

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If you'd like to follow me on Instagram go here.

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Saddened to hear that James Sallis is now sleeping The Big Sleep. I first discovered him as a crime writer in the 90s with a series of novels that broke the genre mold. At the time I was writing fiction, attempting novels that merged noir and sci-fi. I emailed a sample to Sallis and to my surprise he actually replied with some positive feedback. Despite his encouragement, I was unable to finish anything that I was really satisfied with. He worked on the new New Worlds magazine for a while in the late-60s and it was there that his first sci-fi short story was published. The editor, Michael Moorcock, introduced Sallis to the hardboiled crime classics which eventually lead him to writing novels that presumably made him money (Drive in particular) unlike the sci-fi. His sci-fi shorts are collected in Time's Hammers which has a fantastic introductory essay written by the man himself.

Dreamachine / Book-buying highs / Archigram and the material world / Vispo: Psychological Compromise

 

I went to see Typewriter Jim about some vintage paper he might have that I could buy. The first thing he showed me was this Dreamachine which he got from a friend who's friend had it built as a project. "Over-engineered," Jim said. I wouldn't have noticed. The outer shell is also the wrong colour. It should be dark, to increase the 'strobe' light effect. Yes, that made sense. He turned it on. I watched it rotating for a while, but looked away for fear of entering a hypnagogic state. 

I have a fear of any mind-altering experience, perhaps because I consider my mind already 'altered' since birth and further changes could be distressing. So I have never dabbled in mind-altering drugs. The nearest I've been to that kind of 'high' was when smoking a joint given to me whilst staying at my then girlfriend's flat. I smoked it on the balcony and didn't enjoy the feeling of my mind floating free from it's natural home..

These days I get high from buying books. There are several kinds of high involved, of course. The surprise bargain find in a charity shop, the online hunt and capture, the high street hunt and capture, the book fair find and the unexpected online find, such as the one pictured below. It's a box containing facsimiles of every issue of the Archigram magazine. I didn't know of its existence until a couple of weeks ago. It was published in November of last year. The high experienced when opening the package was just about the greatest possible when it comes to buying books, or in this case, magazines.

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I've always had an aversion to adverts. I'm not saying they shouldn't exist, just that they have always irritated me. From way back in the days of watching television I would do anything but endure adverts - look away, get up, close my eyes etc. It's as if, from a young age, I had an inkling that I would never be a great customer, a person susceptible to the seductive art of the advertising 'creatives'. Why? Because I would never be materialistic enough? Because I've never liked being told what to do either with my money or, to be honest, anything else. 

All attempts to sell anything from a brand of baked beans to the latest car were wasted on me. That said, adverts of old now have a charm, don't they? Of course they do, being snapshots of what feels like an ancient civilisation; relics of consumerism past. At least those adverts from British TV were just that, British. Today, on YouTube, for instance, I'm plagued by American female voiceovers. I don't know why I find the chosen voices so irritating. It's not as if I have anything against Americans. But..."Grammarly" - ugh!

Most adverts today supposedly aimed at the British look as if they portray another country. They always have to me, in a way. Those homes, those lifestyles...yes, I was raised in a normal council house environment but upon leaving home I went in a different direction, one which did not take the supposedly 'normal' route known commonly as 'progress' from bedsit to house and family etc.

You'll know if you're a regular reader that I'm certainly not 'anti-consumerism' in the classic sense. Look at all the books I buy, some of which are quite expensive. The Archigram box was not cheap. One of the things I like about Archigram's collective ethos is a celebration of the material Pop world and even it's disposability. That is not fashionable nowadays nor, one could say, is it responsible regarding the welfare of the planet. But that was the 60s and working out of the epicentre of the Swinging world, London, who could blame them for celebrating the products of that golden age?  

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Psychological Compromise, RTomens 2026

More work with ink pens. I'm enjoying drawing the lines which dictate the course of the typing, perhaps because it means I have one decision less to make, namely where to begin with a blank canvas.

TTFN!

Vispo: Dreaming Ground / In the mood with Cecil Taylor

Dreaming Ground, RTomens 2026

Some days that mood just comes over you, doesn't it? You know the one...you're in the mood for some Cecil Taylor. So it was for me this morning, to accompany my typing and drawing...

...the album is Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come. 

What could be more appropriate to my improvisational key-tapping than Cecil Taylor 'tapping' his? As his fingers wander, so do mine. If only I could tap into the maverick's genius for variations hammered out of the eighty-eights! Sadly, I can't. Never mind. Could Cecil make visual poetry? Probably, if he had put his mind to it. I've long felt that his Excursion On A Wobbly Rail is a perfect title for not only my typed wandering but also my life.