Turps Banana

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Issue #11

They’re just paintings. This is what’s so hard to get over about Pollock’s work, what can make you shut up suddenly, confounded. The radical materiality, the almost stupid factuality of it – both in and beyond the felicity and the mastery – can stop you dead because of what it’s about. It is the factuality of sheer human limitation, the dead end of the romantic, of desire. It’s like getting to a place where the gods are supposed to be and finding nothing. A discovery like that should kill you but it doesn’t. The painting keeps being a painting, beautiful and lively and forlorn.

You feel – I feel – that this might be something worth remembering and worth being true to. It gives a taste of truth that, with courage and luck, might just become a predilection, a habit of being true. It would be nice to have this art always accessible, for recovering the taste in its original sharpness, as sharp and unmistakeable as tears on the tongue.

From Les Drippings in Paris, a review of the Pollock restrospective at The Pompidou Centre (4 Feb – 19 April 1982) by Peter Schjeldahl, first published in the Village Voice

Issue #10

When I met Sean Scully in Munich a few months ago I found that he was open, caring and generous, and certain of his own nature.

I suppose this could be construed by some as arrogant, but for me there was a humility and tenderness in his self knowledge. Scully knows what he is aiming for and I feel that he has always hit his target. I think he has achieved the musical recognition to which he makes comparison in so much that you can spot a Scully from a glimpse. But if you spend time to 'listen' to each piece you will find the insight and the condition of the soul within - mine, yours and his. The fight and the patience required is universal,the simplicity is deceptive.

Introduction to Peter Dickinson's converstation with Sean Scully for Turps Banana #10

Issue #9

Your sense that the ’50s work and early ’60s was “forced” to “look” “abstract” was the largest part of the comic-absurd subject. I knew it at the time but couldn’t tell anyone.
The word FINIS really means that things are beginning to be understood. And one’s greatest desire finally is not to be merely liked, etc but to be understood.’

Philip Guston, from a letter to Ross Feld in Guston in Time, published by Counterpoint, New York, 2003

Issue #8

"Since 1972 I have produced three to five gouaches a day. I have principles connected with this new medium:

1. Never rub out or attempt to erase. Work round it if you have made a mistake. Make of your mistakes a strength rather than a weakness.

2. Wait for it. That is , if you don't get a clear message, do nothing.

3. If you have a full brush and you have made a mark, do not think that you have to use the paint on your brush - wash it out.

4.As in life, it is not so much what you put in but what you leave out that counts.

5. Paint as if you were painting a wall (Bissiere).

6. No colour stands alone. They are all influenced by each other. This is when the dicey part comes in. I mean the balancing act.

7. Most pictures can be pulled round. If you run into head winds, tear it up.

8. Don't drink and smoke so much & lay off the nudes. Nice, but too easy a gambit."

Roger Hilton, from The Figured Language of Thought by Andrew Lambirth, published by Thames and Hudson, 2007.

Issue #7

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poets pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name,"

William Shakespeare, from Theseus's speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream, published in 1600

Issue #6

"Painting is the art which reminds us that time and the visible come into being together, as a pair. The place of their coming into being is the human mind, which can coordinate events into  time sequence and appearances into a world seen.

With this coing into being of time and the visible, a dialogue between presence and absence begins. We all live this dialogue."

From Success and Failure of Picasso by John Berger, first published by Penguin Books, London in 1965 and then by Granta Books , London 1992

Issue #5

"Painting is a medium of concerted imagination, symbolizing consciousness. It's not a flat dump for miscellaneous ideas.'

From Funhouse, a review of the Jeff Koons retrospective in New York by Peter Schjeldahl, published in The New Yorker, 9 June 2008

Issue #4

'Ultimately, however, Hamilton notes that, "the 100 percent resolution of oil paint on canvas is still unmatched".'

From an essay by Michael Bracewell on Richard Hamilton's A Host Of Angels series, published in Issue 13 of Art Review (June/ July 2007)

Issue #3

'Braque was sayting the other day, 'Cubism is a word invented by the critics, but we wre never Cubists.' That isn't exactly so. we were, at one time, Cubists, but as we drew away from that period we found that, more than just Cubists, we were individuals dedicated to ourselves. As soon as we saw that the collective adventure was a lost cause, each one of us had to find an individual adventure.'

Pablo Picasso, from Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot, Virago Press Ltd.

Issue #2

'Most things in the world are absolute in terms of taking someone's word for it. For example, rulers. But if you yourself made a sphere, you could never know if it was one. That fascinates me. Nobody will know it. It cannot be proven, so long as you avoid instruments. If I made a sphere and asked you, "Is it a perfect sphere?" you would answer, "How should I know?" I could insist that it looks like a perfect sphere. But if you looked at it, after a while you would say, " I think it's a bit flat over here." That's what fascinates me - to make something I can never be sure of, and no one else can either. I will never know, and no one else will ever know.'

William de Kooning, from an interview with Harold Rosenberg, first published in Art News, vol. 71, no. 5. September 1972, pp. 54 - 59

Issue #1

The idea to establish a magazine about painting, made predominately by painters, became concrete about two years ago during one of our many discussions/arguments about our own work and other painters that interested us. We, along with most of our friends , have a long history of such discussions (usually in the pub) and built on fairly regular studio visits. These discussions are vital to us and we wondered if there might be a demand for a magazine that could act as a forum for the ideas and views of painters.

Partly because art criticism is not a science and because we believe good painting is not driven by ideological principles, Turps Banana does not carry a singular position or attitude about painting , but is as open as possible, in order to allow dialogues to develop. What excites us most is that uniquely, the contributors are not critics or professional art writers, but practitioners whose contributions will hopefully illuminate thier own practice as they reflect on their contemporaroies and their interest in the history of painting. We aim to publish correspondence on a letters page, and also pursue interesting suggestions through future features so the magazine may become a receptive vehicle for those interested in painting. Please use it by emailing editorial@turpsbanana.com