Linenhall Street
We travelled from the Giant’s Causeway - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/giants-causeway-gateway.html
- down to Belfast at a leisurely pace, stopping whenever we chose to, arriving
late in the day after neglecting our schedule. Why should any experience be
modified by a pompous preconception of time, place or circumstance? Not wishing
to face the challenge of finding accommodation in the unknown hubbub of the big
city at this time on a Saturday evening, we drove around in the maze of
motorways bypassing Belfast and, in the twilight, discovered the small village
of Moira. It turned out to be a good find. We asked at the local pub for
accommodation but this establishment was for alcohol only. The noise seemed to
confirm this with everyone apparently having a good time. They all wanted to
help. We were directed by the rowdy consensus to a nearby building where, in
spite of its anonymous appearance, we were greeted on the street at the
doorway, told where to park, guided in, and shown a room directly above the
road: home for the evening. Had there been some planning, collusion, scheming
involved here? Opposite this un-named guesthouse was what was claimed to be the
oldest pub in Ireland. It was indeed a convivial place to enjoy a quieter drink
and a pleasant dinner before retiring for the evening.
Waterguard Offices
The Crown Bar
The next morning, after an enjoyable breakfast,
we chatted to the proprietor of the B&B and his assistant. They
enthusiastically gave us advice on getting to Belfast and on what one might do
there on a Sunday morning. Both were typically Irish - genuinely friendly and
purposefully helpful in a quirky manner, with a determination for us to make
the most of our short stay. We followed the directions and soon reached a
sleepy, Sunday-morning Belfast. The city was surprisingly empty and quiet, but
this did not make parking any easier. Happily, feeling very pleased with
ourselves, we found a parking bay near the city centre. A young man stepped out
of the nearby terrace, so, being uncertain, we asked him if one could park in
this place. There were no obvious signs to make times and conditions clear.
Although he was doubtful about parking rules, his advice was like the response
in the classic Irish joke that, when asked which direction to take at a branch
in the road, the local Irishman gives the instruction: “I wouldn’t go that
way.” In Northern Ireland, the real-life version was: I wouldn’t park there;
the inspectors are around frequently and the fines are large. Even on a Sunday?
Shrug. The joke had a better outcome.
McConnell Property
Arthur Square showing The Spirit of Belfast sculpture by Dan George
North Donegall Square
Not being happy with this vague response, and
not choosing to risk a whopping fine, we opted to move to the parking station that
our Belfastian advisor said was just around the corner: and it was! Driving
doubtfully, uncertainly down the dim entry ramp, we moved into a huge,
cavernous void sandwiched between two grim concrete slabs. The vast, dark
concrete-columned space could accommodate hundreds of vehicles, but it was
completely empty: totally void. Why did we ever choose to listen to the
ignorant local when it seemed that Belfast was deserted, with there being no
apparent demand for Sunday parking? With a degree of frustration and annoyance
we chose a space near the lifts and took the elevator up to what was said to be
ground level. We stepped out into a huge, slickly appointed shopping centre,
empty and closed like the remainder of this city. We meandered through the
cliché multi-levelled, glassy voids with no interest or enthusiasm for the
array of standard shops, until we reached a side road and walked towards the
larger street nearby. Public civic place always has a different feel to the
spaces in shopping centers that seek to replicate the vibrancy of a city
street. Disappointingly, we arrived close to where we had chosen not to park.
Belfast Metropolitan College
The Crown Bar corner
Corner Callender and Chichester Streets
How does one start to look and see in a
new city? We strolled along aimlessly, alert for everything, expecting nothing.
One always has to carefully manage the time one spends on looking, seeing and
feeling, and the time taken peering through the lens, framing and clicking. The
camera can take over the whole experience if one is not wary. The irony is that
more time can be spent on perusing the images captured by this gadget than in
participating in the city itself: ‘selfie-looking’ could describe the activity
that ignores the real world in favour of MY images. There was much to intrigue.
Belfast had grand buildings with a different feel to those of Dublin. Dublin
was a random mess, poetically layered and cluttered around a small stream full
of stories, and streets full of ghosts and Guinness signs. Belfast was grander,
more rigorous; tougher. It was structured and pompous, like Glasgow without its
native flair and brash humour that adds a layer of happy cynicism to its
acclaimed boldness. There was no surprise with this similarity as Glasgow is a
mere stone’s throw away. Some of Belfast’s architects and builders, or perhaps
their inspiration, must have come from neighbouring Scotland. We found a
patisserie so stopped for a croissant and coffee - French Belfast breakfast. We
decided to stroll along the other side of the road in the opposite direction to
see the side of the street we had just passed by, under. We had no particular
aim other than to explore and experience this city as efficiently and
effectively as possible: to let it talk to us; being what it wants to be. The B
& B programme for the day had been forgotten in favour of ad hoc discovery.
City Hall
Assembly Buildings
Belfast was easy to understand, to learn. It
felt familiar: Glasgowish formal. The landmarks were dominant and became
friendly references as they reappeared rearing up again and again from
different directions in various contexts, reminding while gathering more
beautiful buildings within their ambience of acquaintance. We passed the grand
and ceremonial City Hall and eventually reached a market building at what
seemed to be the end of the road: St George’s Market. The folk at the
guesthouse had mentioned this place that we had just stumbled upon. It was a
wonderful Victorian brick structure similar to the marvelous Dublin markets
that we had luckily walked by on our last day in the city as we were rambling
through its ‘unknown’ parts. St. George’s had a decorative industrial irony
about it: sweet and sour. We moved into the building to discover where all the
activity in Belfast was concentrated on this sleepy Sunday. The market was
crowded; the space filled with noises of commercial activity, smells of cooking
food, and flooding natural light from the industrial skylights over. Row after
row of stalls were arrayed under a finely detailed steel-framed roof zigzagging
above the tabled crafts and foods. It was a typical market where wares
were displayed at individual stores for passersby to peruse, take pleasure in and
purchase. The buzz stimulated an urge to buy. There is something unique about
such places that highlight how barren and staged the voids of corporate
shopping centres really are.
St. George's Market
St. George's Market interior
After admiring many bits and pieces, we found
ourselves at a table spread with eye-catching drawings that, surprisingly, were
printed on ‘100% cotton,’ not Irish linen tea towels, the classic cliché
souvenir. Ironically the business name was ‘Flax Fox Designs.’ It was indeed a
cunning ploy to use cotton for Irish craft: crafty. We had just passed
something similar, images that were prints on pure Irish linen, but the
drawings on cotton were the ones that intrigued. There was something too twee
about the linen images, cute and indulgently sweet, sentimental like birthday
card illustrations can be. Those on cotton displayed a naively bold, free and
confident hand. They were uniquely architectural, illustrating buildings of
Belfast, the landmarks and historical monuments that we had just walked past
and into; those city icons that we were using as our directional references.
One was purchased, perhaps as a souvenir – see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/on-souvenirs-place-memories.html
; maybe just to show how we appreciated the effort, the skill, the thought:
then, as an afterthought, another was picked up, maybe as a gift: see also
- http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/my-souvenir.html
Ulster Hall print
St. George's Market
There was much of interest to purchase in the
marketplace, but memories of airports and the recollection of those that we had
to go through on our way home, modified all of our temptations - nullified
them. Even the food was passed by, as we had enjoyed an excellent breakfast
supplemented by the French finale. We eventually moved outside again to what
was now a familiar Belfast, sunny and breezy, to discover more side streets
filled with ‘arts and crafts’ buildings, not more markets, but buildings from
the turn of the last century. Macintosh must have been known in Belfast. We
entered a beautiful church during its morning service, (St. Malachy's in Alfred Street**), then walked back to the
main street that now was surprisingly busy. All the pedestrians were heading
with a degree of determination towards what turned out to be the Christmas
market. We were swept up in the rush and found ourselves back at the City Hall
that had been transformed into a cluttered fairground for Christmas. This fun
gathering was really crowded and again presented us with more temptations to be
overcome. The easiest way to avoid the oppressive numbers and the enticements
was to leave. It was getting late. We had to get close to Dublin that night,
ready to leave the next day.
City Hall Christmas Market
We went back to the shopping centre that was
now a hive of activity. It had come to life. Did Belfast still keep the
Sabbath, just on the Sunday morning? We took the lift down to the car park
that, astonishingly, was now completely full. We had to quietly apologise and
thank the young man who told us to come here. We paid and drove off down the
east coast to the border detour and beyond. We will have to come back one day
and spend more time in Northern Ireland. It was more than we had expected.
Ulster Hall
Ulster Hall print
Ulster Hall - photograph
The flight home was long and tiring. It was
some months later that we took these tea towels out, rediscovered them as one
does with these things that usually turn out to be surplus to any need.
Souvenirs do help one recall: all of our time in Ireland came back to us. One
tea towel was picked up. Rather than use this beautiful image as a utility
item, the printed cotton was edged and hung as a screen on a window. The other
tea towel was put aside again, perhaps to be rediscovered on another occasion
or just forgotten. Souvenirs nearly always turn out to be unwanted impulse
purchases, sundries. The window hanging looks very pretty, intriguing. As one
sits and looks at what appears to be a crude sketch, one can learn much about
Ulster Hall. Drawings highlight how one sees: see – http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/on-copying-drawing.html Drawings touch the person drawing and the
one reading it, perusing it, looking at it, seeing it. Eyeing something is a
complex experience. There is something vital and alive in this ‘between’ zone
that is never there in a CAD document. The drawing shows how the person with
the pen has seen, felt; how the hand has moved to record what the mind has
interpreted, confidently or with some trepidation, hesitation or doubt. CAD
images are always slickly assured and anonymous; they make handicraft seem
messy, less, as all machines do with their apparent perfection in performance.
Ulster Hall print
The window hanging
The text in the corner of the cotton panel
named the image: Ulster Hall by Flax Fox
100% cotton www.flaxfoxdesigns.com The lines delineated the broad form,
replicating the perspective enlargement of the front of the building and filled
in the details that were deemed essential to the eye – those that caught the
eye in this reading. The semi-circular window heads; corner quoins; balustrade
parapets; finials; and more were sketched with a certainty that emboldened the
hand to record shapes firmly, but freely – with panache. There was a quality of
dancing in the movements recorded by the line work.
The Flax Fox prints all have a distinctive character
The site tells more:
Well
Flax Fox is me, Danielle Morgan, pictured up above holding my St George's
Market screen print. I'm an artist living in Northern Ireland who likes to
sketch local landmarks and buildings. I find drawing from life the best way to
capture the character of a building and use screen printing as my
preferred way to print. Its so much fun, the possibilities are endless!
Flax
Fox has paper based prints and textiles, hopefully there's something for
everyone to appreciate.
Happy
browsing… from The Fox!
Details of Flax Fox prints
There is an energy,
an obvious vitality in this drawing that eludes the photograph: see comments
below. The drawing emphasizes aspects, distorts, exaggerates to match the
eyeing of the subject. Photographs reproduce the light on the forms, their
relationships and colours. They too can change how things are seen – see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html but require the shrewd manipulation of the
camera and its lens, and the subsequent ‘shopping’ of the outcome. Drawing is
more rudimentary, more immediate, more emotive – well, expressive in a
different manner that engages the body and the mind.
Ulster Hall
Window hanging detail
The characteristics of the drawing are best experienced rather than reported and described. These subtleties are made more explicit if one considers the proposition made in Arnold Pacey’s Medieval Architectural Drawing: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/on-copying-drawing.html Here the experience of entropy is referred to and used to place various works into a time scale, a hierarchy of perception and understanding. The proposition is that the making of a drawing from the real object, and in Pacey's case from the sculptured version of this object, will give a different outcome to the work that copies from another drawing. The concept is that drawing from ‘life’ selects aspects and details, and forgets others, with the copy of the drawing doing likewise without any knowledge of what the neglected items might have been. The illustration, and the sculpture, becomes more and more schematic as each reproduction does exactly what the first has done, but with an ever-reducing quantity of information. This understanding can explain the failure of all fashions and movements, as well as highlight the unique quality of drawing from life. Photographs reproduce what is before them as modified by the photographer. Drawings include a complexity of looking, seeing, thinking, and transforming these perceptions into another image shaped by the movement of the body and the manipulation of the instrument; a representation to be similarly looked at, seen and thought about under the same name as the original place and the photograph.
The window hanging
It is an important
process to comprehend, since architecture has traditionally relied on drawing
for the communication of ideas and specific requirements, down to the last
millimetre. Now, instead of the hand and a pen or pencil that needs constant
attention to provide the required line work, the profession is using computers
– CAD: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/mystifying-gorilla-chases-architecture.html What emotional input is involved with CAD?
How does the equipment change attitudes, approaches and understandings? – see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/cad-games.html There is a difference, as colleagues repeat
what one is constantly confronted with – discrepancies in sections and
elevations that have toilets, for example, appearing wrongly on three different
walls in three different elevations, or, say, sections. What seems clear here
is that the machines’ mechanisms manipulate thinking to an extent that any real
understanding of space and location is suspended, superseded, squashed by the
magic of mirroring; of copy and paste possibilities; of managing a multitude of
different ways to achieve the same outcome, making the manipulator feel
self-important, truly skilled, effortlessly, free to admire the astonishing
appearance of his/her own work, its brilliance. One only has to listen to the
banter in the office CAD section to understand the process: What line
thickness? How does one do this? Where is so and so? etc. The mind is stretched
and distracted by the essentials of the programme that has its own internal
structures that take over from those other important considerations inherent in
what is being drawn: information that can communicate intent clearly and
efficiently, accurately. The odd thing is that this can be achieved with
drawings that have none of these qualities, well, other than clarity. Accuracy
has everything to do with the information, nothing to do with the drawing.
With the thinking eye
and hand, there is a much closer link between the line and the mind, and the
questioning checking – the sense of the reader over the shoulder that is always needed if
one is not to go astray or miss some important alternate possibility.
Creativity is imported into the mechanism of drafting by hand, by instinct. It
seems to become distorted by CAD, put aside by the technology that takes over
as the core process that demands its integral importance be recognised.
Here the eye and the
hand have worked together to give us Ulster Hall, an inaccurate scribble that
schematically records what the artist has seen: and yet it is clearly
recognizable as an accurate reproduction when one looks at the photograph. The
surprise is that there is an element of perspective in the drawing that further
distorts the image. The photograph soon clarifies this with its stolid
certainty and a defined accuracy. Yet the drawing lives, prances as the eye
goes over the building. One eventually admires the skill here. Skill is
something irrelevant with CAD beyond knowing the system; it is displaced to
become a skill at manipulating a machine, its rules. It is an ephemeral
competence only made evident in the process itself. There is nothing personal
here.
● ●
● ● ●
Ulster Hall - photograph
Now, after looking at
the first image that comes up under the Google Image search for Ulster Hall, I
have formed the opinion that these drawings are made from photographs rather
than from the building in its context, in situ. What makes me form this opinion
is the manner in which the building has been illustrated, incorporating the
perspective distortions that result in the wider lower front portion of the
building and the illusion of the hip form of the glazed, lean-to awning. The
eye, after approaching and moving around the street, would naturally see the
building in its complete third dimensional integrity and know its alignments
and orientations, seeing it as it is understood. It would be unusual for the
eye to record this elevational difference with such exaggeration. Only the
photograph specifically highlights these variations. The photograph referred to
In Google Images is identical to the drawing. Other sources for other drawings
need to be checked to test the theory.#
An angled view of Ulster Hall revealing the wall alignments
The glazed lean-to awning
This observation in
no way diminishes the work, but the photographic source offers yet another step
to modify perception. Does this fact aid the bold schematic vision? The
important understanding of the study of medieval sculpture, that there is a
difference between drawing and sculpting from life and copying the
drawing/sculpture itself – see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/on-copying-drawing.html
- could explain the sense of difference that we see here. The drawing from the
street will always be dissimilar to the drawing from a photograph taken in the
street. Canelletto’s views of Venice as seen through the camera obscura
highlight this point. This observation refers to the drawing itself, but there
is also a significant difference between the two acts. Everyone is able to
sense this difference. It is the difference in the quality of the drawing that
is more difficult to understand.
The photograph
The painting
The Archibald Prize*
of 2009 was won by Guy Maesrti, with an oil painting of the blind aboriginal singer,
Geoffrey Garrumul Yunupingu. What was interesting about this image is that it
was very similar to the photograph of the singer/song writer on the cover of
one of Garrumul’s CDs simply called Garrumul, (highly recommended).The portrait artist
claimed that the image was not a copy of the photograph – the Archibald rule is
that works have to be painted from life – but it is difficult to believe that
the portrait was not at least inspired by this wonderful photograph because of
the way that the lens has captured and framed its subject. Everyone can sense
the difference between a photograph and the seeing of the subject itself. The
seeing is a much more complicated, fluid and rich experience, multifaceted in
every way. Viewing the photograph is one-dimensional viewing. A photograph
concentrates the image for the eye as the camera has chosen to record it. The
unusual perspective of Ulster Hall makes it look as though it has been at least
inspired by the photograph, if not copied. Maybe it is this origin that gives
the drawings their confident, schematic quality, the photograph having already
having removed alternative options of seeing. Portrait painters take
photographs in order to capture details, expressions, different light and other
fleeting subtleties; to hold these glimpses forever, for later review – for
insight and reference rather than for duplication. Photographs aid
concentration. It looks as though this singular, distilled attentiveness has
been facilitated for the skilled hand to reproduce as a beautiful drawing that
embodies energy in a beautiful manner. - in a different way.
#
In order to test the
theory, the St George’s Market tea towel, the other one purchased, was taken out, the building Googled, and the images opened. In the array of photographs revealed, there was a recurring
elevation that matched the drawing, but, for some unknown reason, it was rarely
taken square on. It was difficult to make any definitive assessment other than
note that the drawing itself has a slight skew to it that could have come from
the free-flowing hand. The main discrepancy in the drawing is the height of the gable above the brick wall. It is interesting to note that the gable appears to sit lower in the angled photograph, and the openings seem squatter too, more like those in the drawing.
*For more on the
Archibald Prize, see:
and
** It is interesting to note that St. Malachy's Church has the same sideways arrangement as the kirk at Whalsay and Lunna Kirk; see -
and
Interior St. Malachy's, Belfast
View from balcony, St. Malachy's
St. Malachy's Church, Belfast
View below balcony, St. Malachy's
NOTE: Another drawing of Ulster Hall by Mark Seaton, Yard Gallery, is included here for a comparison of style and technique. This is a more deliberate study that again appears to have used a photograph for its rendering. The building seems to be illustrated at night, with the inner entry screen being depicted. One can assume that it might be tricky to work under the street lighting at night.
A photograph of Ulster Hall - day
A photograph of Ulster Hall - night
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