virtual philosopher

CORRECTION: 'Rembrandt Today' will be broadcast at 11.30 am (not 11) on Radio 4 on 26th October

I'm presenting the programme 'Rembrandt Today' on Radio 4 at 11.30 a.m. on 26th October (not 11 a.m as previously suggested!). The programme focuses on the famous self-portrait at Kenwood House in Highgate on the edge of Hampstead Heath (it is well worth a visit if you havent been - free entry, and there is a beautiful Vermeer painting of a young woman playing a guitar in the same room as the Rembrandt). 'Rembrandt Today' includes interviews with artists Maggi Hambling and Idris Khan, art critic/curator Bill Feaver, and art historian Joanna Woodall.

Previous posts relating to this programme here and here.

Idris Khan

I spent yesterday morning interviewing the artist Idris Khan for a radio programme 'Rembrandt Today' (to be broadcast at 11.30 am on 26th October on BBC Radio 4 - the interview with Idris is at the end of the programme). His first solo, exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery, is just coming to an end. The pretext for the interview was a composite image of Rembrandt built from every Rembrandt self-portrait digitally superimposed. This image at first glance looks like a vignetted soft-edged late self-portrait, but look at it for a minute or so and the younger self-portraits start emergering in a succession of aspect-shifts, as if it were a video of the images.

Born in 1978 Khan's work already demonstrates maturity and musicality. He works by building up images by scanning series of images on top of each other, much as the 19th century French photographer Batut had done. So, for example, Khan scanned every page of a modern version of J.S. Bach's cello sonatas to produce an image in which ghostly clusters of notes are visible, but which blend into abstraction. Indeed, the three large monochrome musically-inspired pieces which hang as a triptych in the exhibition share underlying proportions with Rothko's Seagram murals - a conscious influence for the artist. Another visible link is to finely patterned Islamic carpets - Khan was brought up as a Muslim. Most illustrations fail to do justice to the subtle textures of these large-scale prints.

Khan has taken his project one step further by making a video piece, currently on show at INIVA (until 22nd October). For this he extracted three minutes of each of the six Bach cello suites and overlayered both the musical sounds and moving images of the cellists hands and bow. Filmed in black and white, the effect at times is close to Moholy-Nagy's abstract film-making (again, a conscious allusion). The sound, although abstracted and overlayered is surprisingly musical and rhythmic. Snatches of familiar motifs are audible, but new dissonances too. In making the film, Khan used the rhythms he'd recorded from his father, a Muslim, praying. The film is mesmerising.

Rembrandt Today, Radio 4, 11.30 am 26th October 2006

I spent an interesting morning in Maggi Hambling's studio yesterday discussing Rembrandt's self-portraits. Hambling is a passionate enthusiast for 'Ronnie Rembrandt's' ability to communicate about mortality and life through his paintings. During her time as the first artist in residence at the National Gallery she spent many hours with Rembrandt's paintings, and spoke eloquently of their depth. Each time she returns to the paintings she finds something new in them. She treasures a faded postcard of a favourite Rembrandt, the Self Portrait as Zeuxis now in Cologne: our discussion of the the laughing face, captured in visible brushstrokes, led into the revelation that Max Wall managed to sustain a convincing laugh for three quarters of an hour while she was painting him!

The interview will be part of a BBC Radio 4 programme   'Rembrandt Today' ( to be broadcast at 11.30 a.m. on 26th October 2006, produced by Faith Lawrence), which commemorates the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth. The programme focuses on the late Rembrandt self-portrait holding a maul stick and palette, now at Kenwood House in Highgate and will include interviews with an art historian and a critic as well as with artists Maggi Hambling and Idris Khan. One aspect of this painting is the mirror-reversal: X-rays reveal that Rembrandt originally painted a mirror image with a paintbrush in his left hand (he was right handed), but later modified this. We'll be examining the question of whether we read facial asymmetries differently depending on laterality: John Walter makes so-called 'true mirrors' which by using mirrors fixed at right angle to each other allow the viewer to see him or herself as others see them (i.e. are non-reversing). He argues that reading character from faces involves  a left/right awareness.