Taken from a private collection of fairly new art, it was a mixed bunch. I enjoyed a few of the pieces (but, let’s face it, good reviews are boring, so feel free to skip a few paragraphs.) Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s Man Looking out of a Window and Arch together were fascinating. The arch, really half an arch, made of heavy laquered wood, was almost the full height of the room, and was propped against the wall in the corner by a window. In the adjacent black and white photograph, Man Looking out of a Window, which also took up most of the height of the room, the titular man stands under the very same arch. This simple device, including an object from the picture in the exhibition space itself, was surprisingly interesting and almost disorientating, in a way that reminded me of the visual games of Magritte. The sheer physicality of the huge arch, in itself an attractive object, made the photograph come alive and prompted me to take on the identity of the man, who was gazing outside oblivious to the arch looming over him.

There was a sculpture made from sheets of glass by Kitty Kraus, all flat intersecting planes and sharp angles. It appealed to me in the same way that Toby Paterson‘s work does: the way it recalls both the beauty and the ugliness of everyday modernist architecture, which – by way of multi-storey car parks, pedestrian precincts, social housing and schools – became just as much a part of me as I grew up as the mossy rocks, fast-flowing streams, conifer plantations and moors of the North Ayrshire countryside.

I was very drawn to the tiny cardboard models of Manfred Pernice, but I wonder if it wasn’t their cuteness that appealed to me (cuteness and kitsch have been on my mind lately, so I’ve been guarding against their dubious attractions.) But I think it takes more than dinkiness to make something cute in the way that I mean here – the bad way that appeals to one’s base sentimental responses.

There were some other quite attractive and interesting works, including paintings and other sculptures, but what I really want to write about is the bananas. The first thing I noticed on entering the room was the smell of over-ripe bananas, and then I saw them: on a window sill, a bunch of them, quite blackened but definitely just a bunch of bananas. I didn’t have a handout guide, so at this point I didn’t know what anything was or who it was by. A young couple examining them, obviously also lacking the means to identify the works, were prompted by mirth and puzzlement to ask the staff whether they were part of the exhibition or not.

This situation is interesting in itself. Without the description supplied by the gallery’s handout (which I soon obtained) the work is not complete. It turned out to be listed as “Untitled, Bananas, urine (injected),” by Andreas Slominski. The artist wanted us to know that the bananas, apparently just normal bananas, were in fact full of urine. So part of this work is the gallery’s description of it, of the form “[title], [media],” and, following that, the question whether or not urine really has been injected into them.

The artist is playing a game, but it’s much more boring than the games of Magritte. His paintings explore philosophical questions about representation and perception. The bananas seem to me tricksy and facile. Where Magritte’s games were about human nature, Slominsky’s bananas are about the practice of showing things in a gallery. They are a work of nihilism, sabotaging their place in the exhibition by questioning our decision to go there in the first place. I suppose that it’s an intellectual game, but to me it’s not a very interesting one, and it does give me the feeling that I have been treated with contempt by the artist. I might even say that these bananas left a really nasty taste in my mouth.

The other important characteristic of this work, which it has in common with all conceptual art, is that the artist didn’t make it himself. He had a concept and a set of instructions for gallery staff on how to put it together. What is it about this, exactly, that I find so repugnant? Perhaps it is simply that such activities are self-evidently stupid and unartistic, and are especially insulting when they are lauded as important by the art establishment.

I didn’t intend here to embark on a general critique of conceptual art, but I will say this. It might be objected that every generation of artists faces hostile critics, that there have always been grumpy old men screaming “you call that art?” But I think there is a big difference between those who were indifferent or hostile to Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso and so on; and those of us who attack conceptual art. And that is because there is, objectively, a big difference in the art. Conceptual art says “what is art?” All other art says “this is art.”

UPDATE: According to Tim Cornwell in the Scotsman, the bunch of bananas is worth £15,000. You may, like me, wonder who would pay for a bunch of bananas that needs to be replaced and injected with urine every time they go bad, but apparently the value lies in the artist’s certificate.

I have two reasons for the recent lack of blog action, and I mention them because they’re quite interesting (though I feel that neither will counteract the suspicion that if one takes four months off from work then one has time to write blog posts pretty frequently): I was preparing for my saxophone grade three jazz exam; and I’ve become addicted to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alistairrobinson/)

Last time I mentioned the sax exam in these pages, I had just committed to do it. I said at the time that I had opted to play All Blues, Autumn Leaves and Mopti, but I decided not long after to forget about Autumn Leaves and play Lady Be Good instead. It was a good mixture of styles. Starting off with the understated, yet relentless and bluesy, Miles tune; then into the lyrical, cutesy quirkiness of Gershwin; and rounding it all off with the big, ballsy expressive Don Cherry number (in which I think I was sounding like I was playing tenor rather than alto, and in my head I think I heard it played by a tenor man like Pharoah Sanders).

Well the exam has been and gone and I got the result earlier this week: 139 out of 150, which is classed as a distinction. I was certainly hoping for a distinction, but I reckoned I was right on the borderline at 130, and was prepared to settle for a merit. So I was pleasantly surprised. I think I’ll jump to grade five next, if I decide to continue down this route. Unfortunately the jazz grades stop at five with the ABRSM, while their traditional, “classical” grades go up to eight. Trinity Guildhall’s jazz grades go up eight, and they offer the option of performing a piece that you’ve composed yourself, so that might be the way to go.

Or I could just stick with the ABRSM and go classical. Well, just so long as I don’t have to play Flight of the Bumblebee.

The thought of going down the traditional route leads me to my latest endeavour in cultivating my musical taste-buds. I’m reading Musicophilia by celebrity neurologist Oliver Sacks, and I recently read Anthony Storr’s Music and the Mind. It’s clear that both of them are quite musically accomplished, and they write with authority on the music of Haydn, Chopin, Beethoven and so on. For them, the world of music is dominated by the pre-1900 stuff, and I’ve become eager to have another try at appreciating it. I love literature and art right through from the Renaissance, so why can’t I get on with the great music of those times?

So I’ve been listening to Beethoven’s sixth symphony and one of JS Bach’s violin concertos. Yes, I like them (the second movement of the violin concerto gets me pretty ecstatic), but I do tend to feel there’s something missing, at least for my own taste. Sacks confesses that, although he plays Chopin and understands music deeply, he finds the complex rhythms and syncopations of jazz and Latin music “confusing”, because he was brought up with mainly Western classical music. But those rhythms and syncopations are absolutely essential to my world of music, not to mention the jaggedness and dissonance of rock and modern straight music*. Unlike Sacks, I was brought up with Zappa, the Beatles, Hendrix and Ella Fitzgerald.

I’m really a twentieth century boy, and it seems very often that it’s only twentieth (and twenty-first) century music that can do it for me. Or at least music outside of the pre-1900 Western straight music tradition. Maybe the rhythms are just too simple for me, the tonality too dull? I can only go so long without a nice meaty chunk of 7/4 time, or a big splash of minor seconds.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up: I’ve got several Haydn symphonies to get through.

I’ve discovered the delights of Flickr, and spend my days refreshing my Flickr page to see if I’ve got any more comments on my photos. I’m desperate and pathetic: it must be a true addiction. A few of my pictures are littered over this post. Go see more at my Flickr photos

*Straight music: music that comes out of the continuous tradition of musical education and training in Europe and the Americas, centred around prestigious music schools and university music departments and grounded in a study of classics like Bach and Mozart, and in a study of counterpoint, classical harmony, cadences and so on, and which is written mainly for orchestras or ensembles of the traditional acoustic orchestral instruments.

Some call post-1900 straight music “modern classical” but that doesn’t really work, because “classical” is really a musico-historical term; and the alternative “serious music” suggests that jazz, for instance, is frivolous. I’ve been using “modern orchestral”, but in this era more than others composers are writing for smaller ensembles than orchestras and more unconventional instrumentations than are usually found in orchestras, so “orchestral” can’t be quite right.

So I’ve opted for “straight music,” although it, too, is hardly objective and accurate, revealing as it does the prejudice of the jazz world that came up with the term – some of which, however, is probably justified.

Increasingly, many teachers of the humanities agree with the untutored opinion of their incoming students, that there is no such thing as a distinction between good and bad taste. But imagine someone saying the same thing about humor. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday recount one of the few recorded occasions when the young Mao Tse-tung burst into laughter: it was at the circus, when a tight-rope walker fell from the high wire to her death. Imagine a world in which people laughed only at others’ misfortunes. What would that world have in common with the world of Moliere’s Tartuffe, of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, or Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy? Nothing, save the fact of laughter. It would be a degenerate world, a world in which human kindness no longer found its endorsement in humor, in which one whole aspect of the human spirit would have become stunted and grotesque.

Imagine now a world in which people showed an interest only in Brillo boxes, in signed urinals, in crucifixes pickled in urine, or in objects similarly lifted from the debris of ordinary life and put on display with some kind of satirical intention — in other words, the increasingly standard fare of official modern art shows in Europe and America. What would such a world have in common with that of Duccio, Giotto, Velazquez, or even Cézanne? Of course, there would be the fact of putting objects on display, and the fact of our looking at them through aesthetic spectacles. But it would be a degenerate world, a world in which human aspirations no longer find their artistic expression, in which we no longer make for ourselves images of the ideal and the transcendent, but in which we study human debris in place of the human soul. It would be a world in which one whole aspect of the human spirit — the aesthetic — would have become stunted and grotesque.

(Read the full article to see this in context)

But I do have reservations. I also know that Scruton is a self-professed conservative, who sees twentieth century modernism as a destructive movement tied up with socialism, the enemy of common sense and decency (see his brilliant After Modernism). In the exerpt above it’s revealing that he says “even Cézanne.” So while Cézanne might sometimes be called the father of modernism, he escapes damnation. But only just.

UPDATE: Check out Scruton’s book on beauty, of which the quoted article was just a taster.

I was a bit worried about how I’d manage on the mountain yesterday, considering that:

I’d hardly exercised at all since September (our last mountain walk);
I now had not one but two dodgy knees;
I had a cold;
I was feeling pretty run-down from all the commuting and staying up late;
It was February and I had no ice axe or crampons.

But I needn’t have worried: although it was hard-going (it always is) there was no doubt that I’d make it safely to the top, and there was barely any snow around – I was forgetting about how relatively mild it’s been this winter. In fact it was warm enough to strip down to my shirt, and it was only the cold wind at the top that forced me to add some more layers.

We walked up from the west bank of Loch Lomond at Inveruglas, where Sloy hydro-electric power station was waiting in eerie silence for the mountainside pipes to feed its turbines. I’ve always had a queer fascination with – and awestruck fear of – hydro-electric power, at some unfathomable psychological depth. Damns; mysterious underground pipes; giant sluices, valves and channels; pitiless pressures; forbidding, deadly stillnesses. And all of it big – big enough to swallow you up and drown you or crush you or mangle you. When you look at those massive structures, chambers and churning pools, none of it is nicely signposted for you, by way of explanation. The imagination runs riot: what would actually happen if I fell in there? Where would I end up if I was sucked down that overflow? In one respect it’s all designed for humans, but in another it couldn’t be much more inhuman.

But, as I say, it’s not just fear. It’s awe and wonder too, and an affection for it as an impressively mechanical, spectacular, clean way of producing energy. Which is why I can’t agree with the people who say it’s a “blot on the landscape”. There’s something about these schemes that matches the power and grandeur of the mountains and lochs themselves.

The water was black and still, as if unimaginably deep. Each of those windows has a huge turbine behind it, and the four together provide 160 megawatts of power for the Glasgow region. The energy is from the water that comes down from Loch Sloy through Ben Vorlich in a tunnel and down the side of the mountain in four huge pipes, one for each turbine. The station can go from standing still to full load in about five minutes, so it’s used for big surges in demand. Apparently, its refurbishment in the 90s ensured its operation for the next 30 or 40 years. To all you damspotters out there (yes you!), there’s some info on the web but not a great amount.

That’s Ben Lomond, showing a very different profile to the one we’re used to seeing from the south.

A cloud in the process of smothering Ben Vorlich. You can also see the dam at the head of Loch Sloy.

The great thing about winter is that the beauty of morning still hasn’t faded when you start your walk.

The rock is mainly metamorphic, showing twisted contorted layers with frequent veins of quartzite. In the language of Richard Fortey in Earth: An Intimate History, this rock has suffered.

A pose, not of a conqueror, but of a modest adventurer. Little does he know he’s about to be swallowed by a cloud that seems to be hunting him by stealth.

The choice of black and white was not subtly artistic: his shirt was a quite garish shade of red. A good photo of Stu though, I think.

Another picture of Ben Lomond.

Clouds were dancing and spinning together as they came over the mountain from the north-west and met on the other side.

The tiny figure amongst the random monumentality is Stu, distant enough not to cause visual offence with that shirt.

And this is the top, with a peak in the background which looks higher but probably isn’t. The pond was shallow but it wasn’t quite frozen solid. Remarkable in the middle of winter.

Another two views from the top.

Stu in a relaxed mood after lunch. Incidentally, I happened to bump in to Craig Black from Largs near the top of the mountain. I hadn’t seen him for years. What are the chances?

On the way down, a different kind of cloud appeared, much higher.

I recall that it wasn’t long after this photo was taken that I caught up with Stu, and we got to talking about his job, in which he examines people’s ears, tests their hearing, recommends hearing aids, and – if he’s done a good job – sells them the hearing aids. Part of this process is taking an impression of the ear. This is basically a mould of the ear from the outer bit to the drum, made using some kind of setting resin. Afterwards, he sends it to the hearing aid makers. I suggested that he take two impressions each time (he could explain this easily enough with a white lie), so that he could keep one for himself. He could then build up a collection, each ear impression mounted on a little varnished mahogany base with a brass plaque engraved minisculely with the name of the donor. Displayed on a series of shelves, this would certainly be a conversation-starter when they had guests. But why stop there? Displayed in an art gallery the collection could command a high price, as long as it was backed up with a few inarticulate statements that began with things like “I was trying to represent our ambiguous relationship with…”, and “It’s a metaphor for the way that society…”

On conceptual art, I’m definitely open to persuasion and I do try to judge works individually without prejudice, but I’ve got some serious problems with this kind of art that I can’t imagine will just go away. In case you think I’m some kind of philistine armchair sceptic when it comes to art, throwing my Daily Mail at the radio in outrage, well: above is a painting I did. It maybe ain’t much, but at least I’m trying, and I like it more than giant egg-slicers. It’s of the Quirang in Skye, or at least a doodle inspired by the memory of my walk there with Ann a couple of summers ago. It’s an odd, bewitching place on a scale small enough for the eyes and mind to take in.

We were overtaken on the way down by a young woman. She didn’t greet us in the usual upbeat, friendly way, but sarcastically, saying “nice view of the pylons eh?” This was a real downer – sarcasm like that is dark and cynical. Did she expect utter wilderness 40 minutes’ drive from Glasgow? Above you can see the sub-station and the pylons. I don’t think they’re ugly, and they’re so much a part of this area that they don’t seem out of place. I certainly do have an urge to explore the wildest wildernesses, such as Fisherfield in the far north, and the Cairngorms. But usually the marks of humankind – dams and paths and sheep – are not totally unwelcome in the Highlands, being, in any case, sparse and inconsiderable.

Padlock.

As Laura and Kris didn’t share our tastes, they were mystified, and demanded that he admit to liking something they had heard of. I joined in, pointing out that while I couldn’t do without the excitement of surprising, complex and weird music, I also enjoy Outkast, Marvin Gaye and the Beach Boys.

I wondered if he was being more honest – to himself and to others – than me. Or had I just lazily forgotten to continue cultivating my tastes? Or was Daniel perhaps a musical snob, as Laura was gently suggesting. Is musical snobbery bad? Is a fondess for this kind of music honest and ingenuous or is there always a contrarian mentality as part of it?

I’m the first to recognize if I’m becoming lazy with music. If I keep putting on the White Stripes instead of getting into that new John Zorn album, I know I’m just going over old, familiar, easy ground, rather than exploring and altering and improving myself. But I do believe that my increasing openness to soul, for example, is definitely a sign that my taste is maturing. The exquisite and deceptively simple songs of soul music are works of artistic greatness, all the more admirable because they are popular as well.

So even if one pursued an exploration of a certain kind of obscure difficult music with a contrarian motivation, that is, simply to position oneself against or different from others, it doesn’t really matter. Who cares why you get into something, as long as you gain some understanding and enjoyment from it. You may well develop a more mature attitude later down the line. I think this has been my trajectory.

As to whether musical snobbery is bad, well, snobbery is always bad and almost by definition cannot be justified: snobbery is always a presumption. Musical snobbery is the presumption that a kind of music is inferior because of its popularity. If musical snobbery were only the belief that some music is objectively better than others, then many people, including myself, would have to confess to being musical snobs. Stravinsky is superior to Black Lace, Neil Young is superior to Ronan Keating. This is not a matter of taste but of fact. But to dislike music because of its popularity is absurd. Hankering after the weird can be infantile.

Yesterday Stu and I climbed the peaks comprising the Beinn a’Ghlo massif (three munros and a top). Quite a feat for us and so satisfying, because it didn’t defeat us as Bidean Nam Bian did.

I’ve realised that whatever else happens, walking in the mountains with Stu every few weeks is a constant. Between the last one and yesterday’s walk I have broken up with my girlfriend of seven years, moved to a new home, and started a new job. But the walk was the same as always. That might sound dull, but it’s not that we always talk about the same things, or that we’re not changing as the years go by; it’s that we can talk about those different things in the same way, pick up from last time and put the changes into perspective.

This is where I’m living, in Leith. A lovely flat, with a lovely flatmate, Laura.

Which reminds me: regular readers of this blog may know that I’m interested in novel expressions. Latest in my collection of extraordinary phrases uttered in ordinary circumstances is my new cunt is vacuous.

Perthsire, especially the area around about Blair Atholl and Pitlochry and the valleys of the Tummel and Garry, is quite special. It’s cosy and fertile, with rolling hills and masses of deciduous trees, and also happens to have a few mountains. The awesome topography and stunning ruggedness of the West Highlands is missing, but you can have too much of a good thing (in this case at least). As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, the resulting views have a particular beauty.

This is the top of the first munro, Cairn Liath. The climb I know pretty well, across a bog and up a steep scree path. On its own it’s a pretty uninspiring hill, but I saw it differently yesterday because we pushed on beyond it into the heart of the mountain complex: it’s not on its own.

Hasn’t Stu got lovely knees? Well, all is not what it seems: he’s been practising this stance, which – and I’m sure he won’t mind my saying this – miraculously hides their unfortunate knobbliness.

Here’s me on the climb up to the second peak, tired but determined. My energy never left me on this walk, so no matter how knackered I was I never stopped enjoying it, and exhaustion never set in. I thank Cadbury, the makers of the finest chocolate bar in the world:

Yes, I know that Lindtt 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate is exquisite, and that other grown-up chocolate bars are considered superior, but the Chomp takes some beating.

Incidentally, have you tried the sweets that are aimed at kids these days? They’re inventive and interesting, with sophisticated and varied flavours. Galaxy-eaters don’t know what they’re missing.

Lustrous umber under a clean September sky. How nice!

Stu balances on the edge of sunlight.

This is somewhere near the second peak, Bràigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain, Brow of the Corrie of Round Blisters.

I’m guessing that these are the blisters, in the corrie down below.

In the branch of philosophy called aesthetics, some questions regarding beauty might be what is beauty?, are there objective criteria for judging something beautiful?, is aesthetic sensitivity learned or innate?, how much does the appreciation of a beautiful object correspond with the innate configuration of the object, and so on. The hills are the result of the forces of weathering and glaciation, and of the forces of Earth’s crust. The vegetation is the result of millions of years of adaptation in response to the environment, but essentially the result of the accumulation of tiny random and accidental genetic mutations that happen to allow the bearers of those mutations – the organisms – to be more successful. The fluffy clouds are the result of the dynamics of gas and pressure and heat and water in the crazily complex flux which is the world’s weather system. The light is the radiation from the star that we orbit, burning its fuel in a nuclear fusion reactor. We owe all this to the particular agglomerations of matter and energy that led to the formation of the Sun and the Solar System. None of it has purpose and it is not the result of artistic effort (though religious people may disagree). So why is it beautiful? Because of beauty, which belongs to man.

Stu on the way to the top of the third peak, the third Munro, Carn nan Gabhar, or Hill of the Goats. The boulder field was like a shattered wart on the top.

More rocks. When you climb over boulder fields and rocky outgrowths like this, it’s not scrambling, because you’re not using your hands at all, and it’s a very different experience from normal walking, so I’ve decided to call it clambering.

Before descending, looking back over to the first peak.

As you can see, Stuart soldiered on through the pain and discomfort after his arms were severed in a horrendous accident. It’s possible that his successful double limb regeneration was, if not entirely the result of, then certainly helped by, his positive frame of mind.

The descent was pretty short and easy, although it was followed by a long walk back around the mountain and back down to the car, at first following an uneven and boggy path, before reaching the landrover track.

The sun was getting low and I captured the short-lived glory around me in a few photos.

And thanks to everyone at Lettingweb for the binoculars. Well chosen. They’re a quality pair and just right for me. I was using them yesterday, although we didn’t see anything surprising: a red squirrel, a very close-by red deer and several grouse. And what are those little birds that try to lure you away from their nest?

The teacher is John Burgess, a local musician who has toured the world and recorded acclaimed albums. He was frenetic. I always find it slightly frustrating trying to talk to people who are obviously impatient, but if you’ve only got half an hour it’s bound to feel rushed: I think he’s an excellent teacher and we’re on the same wavelength on a few things. To begin with he asked me to improvise a little in C major while he played guitar, and he said there was no doubt that I could improvise. I think he even used the word lovely to describe my little solo, which is nice to hear, and that my intonation was good, which hadn’t really occurred to me before.

He made the point that non musicians and some beginners think that the torrent of notes that emanates from the horn of Coltrane, for example, is nothing but raw emotional expression, requiring nothing but emotional openness, and therefore that all you really need to do is emote. This has been a bugbear of mine for years. It’s important to understand that musicians, to be as good as Coltrane, have to work extremely hard for many years, and that when they play they are applying deep musical knowledge and an immense technical, mathematical mastery. Most people have no problem in granting all this to classical musicians.

At the root of this myth we find the artificially elevated status of the Western Classical tradition, as well as the depiction of black people as natural singers and dancers who don’t have to try, and I find it really annoying that this denigration of technical skill and artistic greatness continues. Nowadays it’s less to do with skin colour. The myth is fostered by the musically-ignorant rock critics who seem unable to take simple joy in air sculpture on its own aural terms, and by rock musicians themselves, who feel the need to maintain the attitudes suitable to their sub-genres; whether it’s nihilistic, dark, laddish, jolly, aggressive or rebellious, the technique is downplayed, the real beauty or interest of the music – why this bit feels like that or how that bit works or just the sheer wonder of organized sound – passed over in silence.