Art’s deeper oceans and Wilder Shore

Another piece from Fiaschi, on 205y September 2010. I met Kris a few times, after being paid to write a couple of articles about his extraordinary art creations. I’m surprised to find this elaborate video on YouTube, published this month. We were friends for a while, but lost touch. He made a necklace for Karleen as a wedding present in 2005.

This is one of those articles.

When he was at Chelsea Art College, Kris Manalien’s tutor expressed concern that his work was, in her words, “Kitsch”. She insisted on remedial training in the form of an art history course. He refused. She insisted, till she had to accept that the terms of his studentship at the college gave him a special dispensation. He could follow whatever courses he wished. He was already 27, no fresh-faced school-leaver, but a man with some difficult life experiences behind him.

Early one morning he went to check some of his pieces displayed in a college gallery. He overheard the cleaners discussing them. One said, “This is the kind of thing I’d like to have on my mantelpiece!” The other agreed. They had no interest in the other students’ work but loved his.

To be loved by cleaners and hated by experts, to care nothing for art history, even as something to react against, is surely the very definition of kitsch. If rebelling against the previous generation is a time-honoured European tradition, then Manalien stands somewhere out in the cold, alienated from the tradition.

“Surely kitsch is mass-produced cheap stuff for the masses,” said Kris to the tutor. “My art is hand-crafted with exquisite care.” I can imagine the tutor’s exasperation. She would not be the first or the last to be baffled by him. It is not that he is eccentric: he makes the rest of us seem eccentric. In this he reminds me of the aliens, ignorant of Earthian ways, in the TV comedy show Third Rock from the Sun.

Properly speaking, Manalien is a primitive. Art history has passed him by, or has failed to impress him. He resembles the cave painters of Altamira. The contours of the rocks suggested animal figures to them which they outlined and enhanced with the pigments they had to hand, such as ochre, zinc oxides and charcoal. Manalien uses a richer variety of raw materials, still taken straight from nature, which lend themselves to being cut, drilled and polished. His most characteristic material is selenite, a gypsum crystal akin to alabaster but with a grain like wood. It’s easy to work and it can be illuminated to glow from within.

His development has passed through several phases, each of them characterised by a fascination with light. These days he works much with lasers and rainbow-sequence LEDs, but when he started he was inspired by stained-glass Tiffany lampshades. He progressed to experiments with fused glass. Fabergé with his use of gemstones and other precious materials has been another strong influence. Aspects of his work also recall the approach of René Lalique, another lover of the translucent, whose work is classified as Art Deco. These styles, in any case, are out of fashion in the world of high art, whilst remaining collectible in antiques and bric-a-brac.

Art Nouveau was the very badge of decadence, but Manalien is the diametrical opposite. The philosophy, style and content of his work owes nothing to those schools of the early twentieth century. Like other primitives, he is an animist. Trees, crystals, water and metals have powers and influences on man, for healing, harmonisation and magic. He works sympathetically and obeys the suggestions that the materials convey to his imagination, rather than imposing his will upon them. His pieces lack symmetry and straight lines, like Nature herself. His wands might be an exception, but even there he incorporates spirals and caduceus windings, whose patterns soften the hardness of cylindrical form. The ocean deeps provide much of his material, notably nautilus, oyster, pearls and red coral.

To execute a commission he works intuitively to harmonise it with the client’s personality. His use of crystals is as much for their healing properties as for their looks. Indeed, none of his works belong exclusively in the realm of “visual arts”, that characteristically divisive European genre. They are objects with mana. They delight more than the eye. They are sculptures to be fondled, and sources of spiritual energy. They are treasures, symbols of power, to be passionately possessed.

Coming back from a short stay with Kris, his partner Robert, their gaudy but soulful parrots, the emanations of crystals, the splendour of refracted lasers and the quiet presence of so many gorgeous objects, I found that my perspective of the outer world had changed. Perhaps I was beginning to see it in a Man/Alien way. Robert had told me that man was a hybrid formed from the mating of Neanderthals with extra-terrestrial visitors. He saw their descendants as somewhere on a spectrum between Boudiccans and Romans. The Boudiccans are in touch with spirit, I suppose like Druids, and the Romans are more tuned to technology and engineering. As I drove back north along the motorway, I found myself more in touch with my Boudiccan side. The swift highway was decidedly Roman (if not Egyptian!) in its triumphant civil engineering.

I found myself contemplating the slopes and curves of the cuttings and embankments on either side of the road. The chalk of a hill had been cut to one angle, the soil to another. Kris had told me the angles of the Great Pyramid at Giza: 51.51 degrees from the horizontal, as in a scale model he has made. The original had a capstone of quartz, naturally embedded with gold filaments. The angle of slope focused certain ambient energies up to the capstone, making it glow. On the M3 motorway, by contrast, grosser forces prevailed: anxious mortals in speeding metal sarcophagi. It felt hard to live in a world where so few are spiritually tuned. I felt closer to understanding the plight of an artist with more than the usual ration of extra-terrestrial genes.

I am clear that “kitsch” in no way describes his art. The word’s musical equivalent would be “easy listening”. Both terms are dismissive and a little contemptuous. We put things there that we don’t want to grant the compliment of critical attention. We don’t mind being called snobs, because the alternative would be to admit there are some things we find deeply disturbing: things that attract our child-nature and our spirit-nature, whilst threatening our sophisticated judgements, our canons of aesthetic discernment. Is high art nothing but an elitist status symbol, proclaiming the owner’s good taste in both aesthetics and investment? Or will we let it be something which nourishes the owner’s soul?

Can we reclaim the ground lost centuries ago and recognise that art can be the magical mingling of skilled and sacred, totem and treasure, therapy and thaumaturgy? However long it takes Manalien’s work to obtain wider recognition, he will keep working, faithful to his Muse, confident of the quiet friendly energy emanated by his beautiful objects. They cannot be called inanimate. Let’s just say they have soul, and waft us to wilder shores.

© Ian Mulder 2005