Alan Measles

I’m no stranger to a ruck. I’ve been knocking around for half a century and spent several of my formative years fighting a bitter guerrilla war whilst at the same time maintaining a top flight motor racing career. Inevitably my macho ‘lifestyle’ meant that I have sustained a few injuries. The most noticeable of which is my lack of a right ear which got burnt off when my fighter plane took a direct hit over Latvia and I was engulfed in burning fuel for a few dreadful moments before I managed to eject. Luckily Grayson’s neighbour at the time was handy with a knitting needle and fashioned me a serviceable replacement that has stood me in good stead for most of my life.

After that terrible incident I was nursed back to health by the local people and absorbed their archaic philosophy with the healing herbs. I foreswore violence and embarked on the life of a wandering holy man. I spent half my life in the wilderness, ignored but doing subtle work in the lonely swamps of the subconscious. Meanwhile Grayson forges a ‘career’ in art. Then it takes psychotherapy to remind him what an important role I have played in his life and he gets back in touch. Luckily he somehow knew that it was important to maintain rudimentary contact even in what has become known as ‘the wilderness years’.

So around the year 2000 Gray starts to celebrate me once more this time not as a swashbuckling hero but as a wise old friend. He finds me matured, no longer seeking endless vengeance and having to win every race. But as I re-enter the conscious human world one blot mars my new found contentment. Someone has tried to usurp my iconic position as the go-to teddy bear, someone yellow with a remarkably similar injury, an evil twin if you will. Yes, I mean that po-faced inanely smiling do-gooder Pudsey bear. That sub-Disney smirker who wanders round ‘cuddling’ children has long been my spiritual enemy. He may be the brand and mascot of a multi-million pound charity fundraiser but to me he is a copycat charlatan and a humourless bore to boot. His very existence dilutes all the hard work I have put in bringing my message to the world. He has cleverly played the old ‘charity’ trump card. But beneath that benign charade put up to protect him from criticism is a demonic heart bent on destroying me and all I stand for. I suspect artist Damien Hirst may in some way be connected with my bland nemesis. Look at the pattern on the bandage covering his supposedly injured right eye, an off-cut of one of Hirst’s famous dot paintings if I am not mistaken. The very fact that Pudsey has recruited such high level allies in the art world only confirms my worst suspicions that he will stop at nothing to inveigle his way into my territory and destroy me. I urge you my followers to be on your guard. Before you know it this malign creature will be up for the Turner prize. Then we are doomed.

AM

Oh ye of little faith. I know what many of you where thinking. A teddy bear! A god! A cult! Ridiculous, winsome kitsch, it will never catch on. But lo the great nourishing river of my wisdom has begun its long journey to join and enrich the ocean of humanity. The word of Alan Measles has sprung from its lofty mountain source and has become already a torrent crashing over the rocks of your disdain and uprooted the stout trees of ridicule and misunderstanding.

Those of you who caught me gallivanting around with my new best friend and fellow Alan, Mr Yentob on his Imagination show the other week will have realised that, not only am I a ‘mere’ cuddly toy who happens to be ‘well in’ with the upper echelons of the media mafia but I have a mass BBC1 style appeal. My loyal bodyguard Grayson was signing books after a talk the other night and young student type girls were whimpering with disappointment that he had not brought me along. They longed to be in my numinous presence so that they might have a blurry photo of us together to post on facebook. Middlebrow women of a certain age pined to stroke my tatted fur and faded wool. ( a cross-stitch kit featuring an image of yours truly is available in the exhibition shop). Even cool young men with the glint of alpha male ambitions behind their geek chic specs asked after me in tones that suggested they still looked forward to Christmas morning.

Then on Saturday (repeated Sunday) a true sign of my fame, I was lampooned on Harry Hill’s TV Burp. This I am told by humans, with a sense of humour, is a very funny television show watched by millions before they settle down to X Factor (whatever that is). Mr Hill had even gone to the trouble of making a fair likeness of me to have dance through the studio. I was at once alarmed and a little proud. Soon everyone will know my name, and the world will be safe.

Fame of course comes at a price. I am reminded of the words of Billionaire Warren Buffet. ‘If you want to be rich and famous, try just being rich first’. I now have to wear a hat and dark glasses whenever I leave the house I fear kidnappers or paparazzi at every turn. I am already getting inundated with requests to help charities. Begging letters for stuffed donkey sanctuaries, refuges for abused Barbies pour in. Heartbreaking photos of leaking Beanie Babies and abandoned cabbage patch dolls plop onto my doormat daily. I am not overly burdened with compassion but these reminders of the suffering of the world puncture my charmingly bluff carapace. Don’t worry I won’t be going so far as to actually help any of these losers but it does strengthen my resolve to spread my message.*

*whatever that is?

Thus far I have avoided appearing live to a public audience, hence my use of stunt doubles. Like the Beatles I fear for my safety. I might be mobbed and torn limb from limb by desperate followers who want a piece of me as a talisman hoping it might bring magical healing to their BLOODY BORING AND MEANINGLESS lives. I will resist the inevitably unsatisfying drug of adulation. I will retain mystery and meditate.

Ommmmmmmmm

AM

I’d like to say sorry to all my new followers, but I am not a frequent tweeter. This is due to (a) my lack of thumbs, (b) My scribe Grayson being very busy having to make ‘art’ for some reason and (c) the fact that he has an old Nokia grey brick phone whose most sophisticated feature is storing TWO texts.

This week he was up in Manchester giving the Pilkington Lecture at the Whitworth Art Gallery. After the talk there was dinner and he was chatting to Maria the director. One of Grayson’s and my favourite topics is which artists are really badly behaved and awful to work with. We think the idea of the wild creative genius should be retired. Those sort of people can be very boring to work with because they are always late or rude or are bullies or pompous. I could name names but I would hate to put people off the uplifting experience of finding their progress through an art gallery blocked by a rusty steel wall.

Gray sometimes reminds students that a perfectly acceptable art career can be maintained with a modicum of talent as long as you are reliable, good fun to be with and deliver the goods. The idea of the monstrously laid back and arrogant superstar may work for the one in a million art god but the bottom of the greasy pole is piled with the corpses of mediocre careers of boring lazy shits. This myth that in order to make great art you have to be chaotic, mentally ill, aggressively rebellious, unfaithful, drunk or drugged may make good source material for subsequent biographers but to here-and-now friends, relatives and colleagues… forget it.

The idea of the romantic idler has a long history. Mr L. da Vinci only completed a few works and once said according to Vasari, ‘men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least’. You can imagine the gossip that would follow Leonardo if he had to work in the contemporary art scene, ‘Only six weeks till the show opens and I haven’t seen a single painting yet, he spends all his time dreaming and being a polymath, did you see him sounding off on QI last week about time travel. Doesn’t he realise I have got a gallery to run and the days of an artist repeating his iconic work ad infinitum are so over, he can dine out on those fuzzy portraits for only so long you know’.

The main problem that would dog Da Vinci nowadays as a painter would be finding and maintaining a fresh micro niche for his work. The world of painters is very crowded with many daubers all fighting over the last few original brushstrokes, or at least the last few vaguely interesting combinations of references and influences. When an artist does find a painting style that catches the attention of the art world he may find himself building his own artistic prison. Collectors and curators will usually want a work in his signature style and when the painter gets bored of it and is tempted to ‘re-invent himself’ and stray from his micro niche, he is likely to end up painting like someone else, so overpopulated is the territory. Still, it’s a nice hobby.

I endure

AM

The artworld was all a-froth as the annual festival of well dressed people standing in white rooms hit town.  Frieze art fair, the village fete of the c’tempreyar tribe coincidentally coincided with the opening of my show at the British Museum. It seems almost deliberate that Grayson should call the show ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’ when just up the road in Regents park is a tent filled with stuff whose significance and value is often only down to the identity of the ‘maker’.

Gray was already a bit art-drunk before Frieze having spent the previous two days judging an art prize. Looking at the work of 700 artists was he said, ‘An interesting insight into the collective ambition of the output of art schools over the last thirty years or so. I came away thinking there is a gross oversupply of mediocre abstract/semi abstract painters.’ He thought maybe licences should be issued so that only the talented could buy large amounts of oil paint and canvas. Another answer might be for Blue Peter to organize a campaign to send all the dreadful paintings to disaster zones to be turned into tents.

He thought the theme of the week was a nostalgia for film. Tacita Dean’s installation at the Tate was explicitly about the death of the medium but Gray spotted at least half a dozen chattering old film projectors at the fair. Maybe the ‘god when will this visual torture end?’ crew having their ‘craft’ moment. At least a film loop installation is usually mercifully short. Neon was everywhere. It is the bronze du jour, i.e make any old guff into ‘a neon’ and it passes more easily as art. Sixth form politics cropped up as usual inspiring Gray to start work on his next curation project tentatively entitled ‘War is Good’. He wants to travel round repressive totalitarian states and put together an exhibition of their approved artists. Sponsorship from BAE systems and the like should be a no brainer.

I endure

AM

Did you read his piece in the Observer today? I, Alan Measles, the tap-root, the mother lode, the radioactive core of his identity gets but a brief mention! Still he seems to have a talent for attracting publicity and lets face it that is the skill that is most in demand in the crowded modern cultural landscape, humph. He says he is very busy this week ‘installing’ the exhibition i.e scanning the Farrow and Ball brochure and shuffling the ornaments about. I always suspected that the fine art game was just interior decoration with knobs on.

On a more Alan-centric note, Grayson went to Paris on Thursday to check out progress on the portable shrine that some outfit called Louis Vuitton is constructing for him. He came back with glowing reports that craftsmanship is alive and well in the 21^st century but as William Morris found out, it is damned expensive. He visited the former home of Monsieur Vuitton in Asnieres that is their trunk workshop. He was impressed and touched that they invited the craftsmen who are making the trunk/shrine to a rather posh lunch they laid on, I assume, in my honour. One of them Eric had worked there for nearly 30 years and had it embroidered on his apron. The attention to detail practised by the craftsmen and women delighted my bodyguard and object fetishist. The shrine has to be made to a standard so that it will look as lovely in 50 years as it does on the day it leaves the factory. My followers need not fret about my legacy, for this custom made significance generator will still look good in naturally cured hide and precision brass long after their homes are flooded and their food sources incinerated by global warming. This portable shrine will mean that a suitably glamorous* setting for encounters with yours truly can be easily set up in a hotel room or conference centre. A very necessary piece of kit in the burgeoning global cult market, I look forward to invitations to Davos, the Bilderberg group and Tea Party conventions.

*I learnt this week from the lovely Marina Warner that the word glamour originally meant the light emanating from holy people or objects.     

The three brave teddies who will sit in for me at the British Museum have now been chosen by public online vote. Congratulations then to Pinny, John Duggan and Dr. Schmoo my acolytes down the ages will be grateful to you for helping to preserve the fabric and the mystery of one of the true-ish gods.

I could go on but my trunk/shrine will probably go on longer.

AM

Grayson and I have just been interviewing Teddy Bears for the post of stunt double. I’m exhausted two hundred and seventy seven of them! No wonder that Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh always have that blank, shell-shocked expression, this choosing business is emotionally draining. Oh, but what a journey! When we dreamt up this idea, to give three lucky bears the chance to grace my throne aboard the AM1 for a month or so, little did we imagine the beautiful (and otherwise) bears we would meet. A big warm slightly worn out hug to all the lovely human custodians who sent in pictures and CV’s and a delirious cheer to all the Teddies that queued round the block here at the British Museum hoping Grayson (Louis) and I (Simon) would pick them to go forward to the live online final and to face the public vote.

In the end several criteria came into play. First up was looking like yours truly Alan Measles, war hero, motor racing champion, god and living guru. Some of the finalists bear (ouch!) an uncanny resemblance to the newest deity to take his rightful place in the British Museum and join the pantheon of god’s from all the world’s religions past and present. Gray had better not lay me down amongst them as he may have trouble recognising his old friend. It is almost as if they had been made from the same pattern, uncanny!

Secondly there was visible evidence of being loved or battle scars. You know the look, fur faded or rubbed away, limbs, eyes, ears missing in action, knitted or patched sections threadbare clothing. What a heart-breaking parade of the slumped and wounded passed before us. Some poor toys were barely recognisable as having once been bears, just blobs of plush stiff with saliva (child’s or dog’s). We thought it may have been too upsetting for the kiddies to see some of these mangled torsos so opted for Teddies that at least retained 70% of a bear’s silhouette.

Thirdly we looked for a good back story, unusual birth, plucky survival, escape from tyranny, that sort of thing. Foreign travel seemed to feature on many teddy’s CV’s some having spent years abroad or on arduous adventures. I was quite impressed, though suspected many of these tales of derring-do were heavily embellished for the purposes of winning over a couple of old warhorses. A lot of the entrants seemed to hang out in wardrobes or lofts for a living, they weren’t even out on a shelf doing bog standard talisman work, which meant they had to definitely score highly in one of the other criteria to get onto the shortlist.

Fourthly Cuteness, that difficult to pin down quality that the Japanese call Kawaii and seems to have been boiled down to pink Hello Kitty cupcakes. Cuteness is an underrated quality in modern culture and Grayson sees himself as at the vanguard of championing sickly sweet faux innocence as a quality to aspire to in cute-ing edge contemporary art. We chose some of the finalists just because Grayson could not stop going ahh and giggling into his pinafore. I let them through reluctantly in the spirit of ‘diversity’.

Finally Gray being Gray we had to choose a few for sheer style. How we present ourselves in the skin deep modern world is increasingly important if we want to get on in a world being taken over by consumers with the attention span of a pop promo editor. Some entries just seem to ooze that most enviable of cuddly toy attributes, cultural capital. Certain teddies with a well-chosen accessory or an angle of limb seem to sum up the cuddly toy zeitgeist. Mighty pint-sized cool-hunters we salute you.

So commiserations to all who tried but failed to make the cut, take heart in that in risking rejection you are members of an elite bunch of teddies willing to put your mis-shapen heads above the parapet. Congratulations to our chosen twelve, you are worthy apostles to a ragged guru. May the teddies with stoutest hearts and most appealing expressions go on to sit in glory between the Elgin Marbles and Rossetta stone and where the likes of Karl Marx and George Orwell took out library books and where millions every year buy key rings.

I could go on

AM