: 20 March 2002 :
“To find a form that accommodates the mess: that is the task of the artist now.” (Beckett)
I don’t know where the quote comes from originally. It was at the end of an article I was reading in a magazine, an article about Francis Bacon’s studio which has been transported from London and recreated in Dublin where he was born. A lot of artists had messy studios. Picasso and Giacometti and Degas all did, three painters who Bacon admired. Bacon’s studio was a real mess. In the magazine there are photos of the clutter, paints and artist’s materials as well as discarded canvases, scraps of paper, stacks of books, and hundreds of photographs strewn on the floor. It’s a real glory hole.
My room’s kind of cluttered too at the moment, though nowhere near the state of Bacon’s. I picked up the magazine from off the floor, where it’s been for a while, because I wanted something to read and I didn’t feel like reading any of the five or six other things I have on the go. There’s a square of the carpet that always ends up covered in stuff, a square with the bookshelves and the desk and the bed making three sides, and that bit of floor is the current home of magazines and all kinds of books and notes. It’s my in-tray, more or less. Everything that’s current ends up there, and I can always find what I’m looking for.
My idea of how active I am is connected to the state of my room. Too much mess, too many out-of-date or unread newspapers on the floor, too many plates needing to be washed up: these are signs that control is slipping out of my grasp. When this happens I’ll eventually get round to having a clear-out, but I never expect it to stay tidy for long – to be surrounded by work-in-progress is to feel busy, and I suspect it was the same for Bacon. At the moment I have several books by my bed: a book on aspects of visual style in the cinema, a collection of Ursula Le Guin’s short stories, Middleton’s plays, A Room of One’s Own (which I’ve not started yet), as well as plenty of books on the floor.
I’m a restless reader, which is why I always have so many books on the go. Unless I have something specific and urgent I have to be doing, I’ll read about a variety of things and change direction on a whim. For example, I picked up the Woolf from the library today because I came across a quotation of hers in a book and I realised I’d never read A Room of One’s Own. I’m reading the Le Guin for the same reason, because I’m not that familiar with her and because someone had left the book in my room. I get restless with magazines, too, I think about which ones I have to buy and when the next issue of such-and-such comes out.
Sundays when I was living at home were always a restless day, maybe because of the caffeine. I'd start reading the paper and drinking coffee and then I'd want to be doing something, so I'd run upstairs and play the guitar or do something else and then come back down and read some more of the paper. In a way I suppose I think about my life the same way I think about my room: the more there is going on, the more satisfied I am that I'm being active enough. Course, none of this means I'll ever be able to paint as well as Bacon.
____________________________________________________________
(Helpful public service announcement bit: there’s more information about Bacon’s studio here, if you're interested. Some more photos too, including a replica cast of William Blake's head.)
previous - next - newest
contents - rings - profile - guestbook - diaryland